20: Time Crisis
by Silent Elegy
Summary: Clockwork has gone missing, and his staff has fallen into the hands of Danny's worst enemy. Lost in the past, he must hunt down his escaped evil older self and find the Master of Time before time is changed beyond repair. 20th in a series, new readers.
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: Danny Phantom and all related characters are the property of Butch Hartman and Nickelodean Studios. Kat/Electra and the Ghost Master (and all related characters) are the product of Silent Elegy.

A/N: Happy Twentieth Fic, everyone.

* * *

A metallic thud echoed through the compound, and the only person there to hear it sighed heavily. It was time, he knew, and he found himself more reluctant than he had realized. It would have been so easy to simply remedy the situation and go on, but that would have been irresponsible. Even he couldn't see past the ripples such an act would cause in time.

No, doing what he knew he could, would have been the epitome of foolishness. Certainly, time might recover. They called him its master, but time had no master. Time was the master, and he was nothing but its willing slave. He was relatively certain time would adjust and go on without him, but he couldn't take the chance. He'd been too much a part of the continuum for too long. So many things had happened simply because he existed, that he didn't want to think about what would happen otherwise.

Or was he just being egotistical?

Either way, he knew that he would let occur what was about to occur, and he would not lift a finger to stop it. He sighed again and let his hand hover over the button atop his staff. It would have been so easy, so much easier than doing nothing. He was about to put his very existence in jeopardy, and even though he knew how it would turn out, there was always uncertainty. There had to be uncertainty, for without it, there could be no certainty.

It was an interesting paradox, to be sure. A thing could not exist unless its opposite existed in conjunction. Existence itself existed because the void waited just beyond its borders. Even time bowed to the void…

And then he realized he was wasting time and let his hand fall to his side. He looked around, listening to the silence. His prisoner was resting briefly for one final assault on the prison.

So easy, his mind wailed. Just hit the button, go get a new Fenton Thermos, and hit him when he comes out. Let time sort out the paradox. It had existed for countless eternities before he came along, and it would go on just fine without him. And even that was assuming that he could be erased from existence after all this time, which he seriously doubted.

So easy…

He drew a shuddering breath for the simple comfort all ghosts felt from pretending, however briefly, that they were alive. He glanced around one last time, letting his eyes rest on the clock that adorned his staff. His traitorous mind reminded him, once again, of how easy it would be to ensure it never happened.

Slowly, reluctantly, he leaned the staff against a wall and let go. Slowly, he drew back while his thoughts beat against the inside of his head, demanding that he act and consequences be damned. Something exploded in the far room, and he simply left.

* * *

He burst from his prison with a joyously enraged howl and blasted down the nearest wall. Some part of his mind reminded him that Clockwork could simply stop time and be done with him, but the sudden freedom from long imprisonment had temporarily robbed him of rational thought. It was the unexpected sight of nothing that finally broke through the berserker mode he had worked himself into.

He paused, suddenly uncertain, and looked around. There was no one there. He took a few steps forward and looked around again. There was still no one there. Clockwork's staff leaned unattended against one wall, and he froze upon seeing it. Surely, this was some kind of trick. Surely the Master of Time wouldn't have simply left the source of his power lying around for any vengeful spirits to find.

He narrowed his eyes and looked around. There continued to be no one there. Clockwork had to have known he was on the verge of breaking free, so why…?

There was no one there. He didn't even need to look around, that time. Lunging forward as though any moment would bring the world tumbling down around him, he caught the staff and fled. He had the power to control time, and no one was going to stop him. Not this time, and not ever again. He would have his revenge, and he would start with Danny Fenton.


	2. Chapter One

Danny ran home in the pouring rain. He was tempted to go intangible, but the last thing he needed was for his parents to figure out his secret. While Jack might not think too much about it, Maddie probably would if he came home perfectly dry.

It had been a fascinating day, at the very least. With Walker's barricades down, ghosts were free to come and go through the Fenton Portal again. In response, the Ghost Master had spread his team out over the town to find interlopers and be rid of them, leading to no end of the entertainment around school. Danny's ghost sense hadn't stopped going off since Troll arrived, although fortunately, the vacant-eyed drummer was less inclined to torment humans than his fellows.

The ghost boy thought for sure he would have to go back to being late to school and ditching classes, but he only needed to use his powers twice: once on the Box Ghost while Troll was otherwise occupied, and once on Desiree. Since everyone else had been running and screaming at that point, no one even noticed his absence. He was rather pleased with his idea to let the haunting team stay. They were finally earning their keep.

His ghost sense went off once again as the sound of voices reached his ears. He thought he was prepared for anything as he crept forward, but what he actually saw nearly caused him to faint with shock. Jack Fenton stared suspiciously, yet calmly, at a pair of red eyes floating above a bed sheet. The two men sat at the kitchen table with Maddie between them, apparently in a perfectly civil conversation.

"Hi, sweetie!" his mother greeted him brightly. He was almost relieved to see that the second her attention was elsewhere, Jack switched to a hostile glare. "I believe you've met the Ghost Master."

"Oh, yeah," the ghost agreed, winking. "Him and the Ghost Master goes way back."

Danny was saved from having to comment by his father, who finally couldn't take it any more. "You just keep away from my son, ghost!" he exclaimed, thumping his fist heavily onto the table.

"Now, Jack," Maddie warned quietly. "We're being pleasant to the haunters, remember." He grumbled quietly.

"Okay…" Danny began, confusion warring with amusement. He blinked and pointed vaguely toward the stairs. "I'm just going to do homework, then."

"Oh, don't leave on my account!" the Ghost Master announced in his jovial "come and go" southern accent. "I was just going meself. Thank you for a lovely time, ma'am." He kissed Maddie's hand as best as he was able without lips and seemed to smirk at Jack's snarled comment of "Get away from my wife."

The three humans waited until they were sure he was gone before moving again. "So, Dan, how was your day?" Jack asked, shoving the saltshaker around in lieu of irritated fidgeting.

Danny shrugged and sat down. "It was okay, I guess," he replied, wondering what was going on. His mother had never cared about ghosts or offered to think of them as human before, and suddenly she was inviting them over for coffee? True that she had warmed up to her son's alter ego considerably, but…

His train of thought was interrupted by the doorbell, and Jack jumped boisterously to his feet. "I'll get it!" he exclaimed, running from the room. Mother and son shared an indulgent smile.

"So…" Danny began, carefully measuring his words and tone. "Why was there a ghost here?"

"Well, after some long thought on the subject, I've decided that maybe not all ghosts are evil after all, and I'm trying to swing your father around to my point of view. I had hoped Rex would just send that nice Alto girl, but…"

"Rex?"

The woman chuckled. "The Ghost Master's real name, but don't let on that you know. He hates it." Danny snickered, vowing to call the ghost by his name at every available opportunity. He was trying to think up a safe and witty way to respond when she added, "I wonder what's taking your father so long…" By the look on her face as she stood, she had a good idea why and was not pleased.

Danny spared a brief moment to be disturbed. They couldn't possibly know about him, could they? They would have kicked him out of the house or tried to "cure" him or something, wouldn't they? Well, maybe they wouldn't kick him out. Maddie had been a lot nicer to his alter ego of late, even to the point of completely dropping her suspicion of him. It really was nice not to have to worry about-

"Hello, Danny," a voice all but purred as his ghost sense went off. He'd had nightmares about that voice for weeks.

Danny stood, whirled around, and transformed all in one smooth movement, knocking his chair over as he did so. "You!" he exclaimed, torn between anger and terror at the sight of that emblem, so like his own. His eyes fell on the clock-topped staff as he backed through the table to get away. "Where'd you get that?" he demanded, fearing the worst.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" his older self responded, the mockery plainly evident. Dan laughed derisively as the boy's eyes flicked briefly toward his parents' path of retreat. "Oh, don't worry. They won't be intruding on us."

"What did you do to them?" Danny cringed at the answering smirk. He saw the ghost's hand move toward the button on Clockwork's staff, and…

Suddenly, he was staring at the world from atop the Fenton Command Center. He tried to look around, and realized that he couldn't move, not that it mattered much. The only person whose location he was very interested in was standing a dozen feet away, staring down at the street.

"They're like ants, aren't they?" Dan mused. "Going about their lives, not knowing it's all about the end. I almost pity them sometimes…" He turned to flash a viper's grin that revealed his words for the lie they really were. "And then I remember that I'm not human and don't care. But you…"

He walked around behind Danny, and a twist of power forced the boy to turn in response. There were his friends and there was his family, lined up as though for a firing squad. Mr. Lancer was not present, and the boy was just as glad of that; the fewer people put in danger, the better. They were frozen in time, and Danny finally noticed the faint weight around his neck.

"You…" Dan continued his rhetoric. "Why do you bother to care? You know they'll all turn their backs on you eventually, like they all did me."

Danny wanted to point out that being brutally murdered could hardly constitute turning one's back on another, and that Valerie was the only one whose response he had ever been unsure of. He would have liked to add a Jazz-style lecture on how it was kind of his responsibility to protect people from ghosts simply because he could, and that it didn't matter what they thought. It was with no surprise that he found himself unable to speak; his older self didn't really care what he had to say, anyway.

The ghost seemed to consider for a moment, eyes fixed on the sky and hands behind his back in that posture that was pure Vlad. Not for the first time, Danny wondered exactly how much of his ghost half's future self he was actually dealing with, and how much of it was just Plasmius. The two had been one for a decade or more; he really doubted there was even a difference after so long, but sometimes, he wondered. Perhaps it was simply a part of his mind that couldn't cope with what he might have become…almost did become…

"You know," that hated voice broke through his thoughts. "My long imprisonment gave me a lot of time to think. Clockwork made certain that I knew of my failure, you see, and I began to wonder: If you never become me, then how can I continue to exist? A multitude of theories presented themselves, but it wasn't until I escaped that I realized the truth."

He stopped and strode toward Danny to regard the boy with a mockingly thoughtful expression. "You do still become me," he explained in arrogant satisfaction. "And I will make sure of it."

Dan became invisible. Danny felt a moment of fear wondering where the ghost had gone, then he was battling against the alien force that invaded his mind like an oil spill. Later, he would wonder if it felt like that when he overshadowed someone, but right then, it was all he could do to maintain control without being violently ill. He could feel the interloper's laughter mocking his efforts, could hear him wonder again why he bothered to try. But he had to try; he wouldn't be used, not for murder.

He couldn't…

He wouldn't…

"I won't!" he cried, relief spreading through the void caused by the ghost's forceful exit.

Dan hit the metal rooftop hard enough to bounce and slide several feet. For barely a second, his features were split into the separate ghost halves that created him, one overlying the other. With a snarl of slightly maddened rage, he snatched Clockwork's staff out of the air as Danny lunged for it, then swung the base around to connect solidly with the boy's head. Danny literally saw flashing purple stars shoot across his vision, barely aware of what was happening when he crashed. He heard his older self speak and knew he needed to get away, but his brain refused to cooperate in the matter.

He never actually remembered becoming intangible and falling through the house, but he knew he must have because his next clear memory was of the basement. His brain kicked in just in time to avoid being impaled, allowing him to roll out of the way and counterattack with an ectoplasmic energy blast. Dan howled in wordless anger as he was thrown back.

"I won't kill them!" Danny shouted. "And I won't let you, either! I'm not going to become you! No matter what happens!"

"You don't have a choice," Dan returned snidely. "Even with all your denials, all your belief in what's good and just, you know as long as I exist that something will happen that drives you to become me." The two ghosts circled slowly, one seeking an opening, and one simply biding his time. "You know that," the older ghost continued softly, though with no less menace. "And when it happens, you'll kill them, and you will like it-"

"Never!" Danny screamed, charging blindly forward. He ducked beneath another swing, vaguely noticed the brief expression of surprise when the attack missed, and then everything blurred together in a frenzy of black and white gloves and green energy blasts. He wasn't thinking; he didn't dare stop to think. All he knew was hit here and dodge there, blast that and-

There was a smash followed by the sound a spring hitting metal at the end of a high-speed flight from its rightful place. Dan shouted, and he thought he might have as well, though he was never entirely certain. The hands on the clock atop the staff swung wildly in reverse. There was a bright flash of light that he thought would never end and…


	3. Chapter Two

Clockwork said he couldn't get free.

No, he didn't. He said not to worry about it.

But didn't that mean…?

No, it didn't mean anything.

Clockwork said not to worry.

Clockwork…lied?

Danny realized he was staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. It was low and sloped, as though the builder had simply used the roof itself for the ceiling. Then he remembered what he was trying not to think about.

Clockwork lied to him. He had trusted Clockwork, considered him a friend, and the ghost had lied to him.

But that couldn't be. He couldn't believe it. Maybe Clockwork just didn't know.

But he was Clockwork; he knew everything.

Everyone made mistakes…

The moon as it shone through a window was the only obvious source of illumination. The walls, as far as he could see, were unadorned brick. He looked around a bit more and discovered that he was lying on the floor on a mattress that felt like it was stuffed with feathers. The pointy shafts jabbed his back, but not to the point that he felt any particular desire to move. He tried to close his eyes and go back to sleep, certain that it was all just some strange hallucination brought on by one too many hits to the head.

Oh, yes. His evil older self was free. His muscles chorused a protest as he twisted around to sit up, and his head organized a rebellion with his neck to remind him how much they hated him for getting into that fight. He held still for a moment, leaned over while his blood circulation got itself straightened out again, then started to stand.

"Oh, please!" exclaimed an almost pleading voice. "You really must lie down. You were hurt very badly."

Danny blinked owlishly at the speaker, some vague recollection flitting through the back of his mind. The voice was the most familiar, but he though he would remember meeting someone with that kind of accent. It was almost French, with a touch of British, all of it faint. The man wore an old fashioned dressing gown, which Danny noticed when he crossed the room.

"Please," the man said again. "You have fallen into my care, quite literally, in fact, and I could ne'er forgive myself if I let harm come to you. Lay back, please."

"Who…are you?" Danny muttered as he let himself be forced back down.

The man smiled softly, an expression that tugged once again at some memory, and said, "I am Mallory."

"M'Danny…"

"I rather thought so. You spoke in your sleep, very strange things. What exactly is a 'Fenton Portal'?" Receiving only a sleepy murmur for a response, Mallory smiled again and went back to his work.

* * *

Light streaming through a window woke him and put him in a state of confusion. His aching body wouldn't allow him to forget, even for a moment, the events of the previous day, but the light was so like the one that came through his window that he wondered if he hadn't dreamed it after all. Then he opened his eyes and realized that the window was in the wrong place, and there were sharps things poking his back. 

He pulled himself to his feet and stretched, wincing as his joints popped. It was a small room, he noticed, looking around. There was a bed and a rickety wooden table that somehow looked very old-fashioned and relatively new. Turning the rest of the way around, his eyes fell on his makeshift bed and the pile of clothes that sat at its foot. They looked like something Kat might consider wearing for about two seconds.

"Geez, did I fall into Amish country?" he whispered. As he dressed, he became aware of a faint, steady tick. A bell rang, startling him, and he became invisible and intangible to peek out through the only door.

"Welcome!" quietly exclaimed the man from the night before. Mallory, he recalled. The newcomer began to chatter enthusiastically, and Danny turned his attention to source of the noise he heard. He was in a clock shop; somehow, that failed to surprise him, although he was impressed. They adorned every available surface, including the walls and floor. Danny stepped through the door, taking care to be as quiet as possible.

He was missing something, he knew. He blamed it on the concussion. But he didn't have time to mess around trying to figure it out. He slipped back into the living area to transform, then went out through the roof. After several seconds of merely staring around in incomprehension, he groaned and drifted back down.

"This is a dream," he muttered, pacing slightly around the confines. "This has to be a dream. I-" The door opening startled him into a battle stance, but he relaxed on seeing his host.

Mallory frowned slightly, though his voice was cheerful enough. "Are you sure you feel well enough to stand?" he asked, honestly concerned.

Danny shrugged. "Yeah, I'm good. Um…this might sound like an odd question but…what year is it?"

The man brightened considerably. "Oh, that's not odd at all! Why, many are the times I've wondered that very thing! Just this morning I had to ask Goody Winthrop to remind me, and…" He trailed off and acquired a somewhat puzzled look. "And I seem to have forgotten again. A moment, young sir." Danny couldn't help but snicker quietly as Mallory peeked at the pocket watch on his waistcoat. "Ah, yes! 'Tis the Year of Our Lord, 1775!"

"1775?" Danny exclaimed. He sat down in the proffered chair and buried his head in his hands. "You have got to be kidding me."

"Pardon?"

"Never mind," the boy sighed. "Look, thanks for helping me, but I have go. There's someone I need to find." He only hoped that he could find Clockwork before he found Dan. Or Dan found him…

"If you must," Mallory responded, the picture of misery. "Still, will you not at least break fast with me? I am certain you must be hungry."

Danny hesitated. On the one hand, he needed to find Clockwork and drag his older self back to the future before they changed history. On the other, he was starving, and whatever was in that covered basket his host had carried in smelled really good. "O…kay…" he said at last. "But I can't stay long."

Mallory chattered on the whole time like a man who didn't have company often and was determined to entertain. Danny didn't understand half of what he said; most of it was simple town gossip. At some point, he realized that he had finished eating and was still sitting there. He was about to interrupt the flow of words so he could leave when something the man said caught his attention.

"A clock-topped staff?" he repeated, uncertain he had heard right.

Mallory nodded vigorously, delighted that the boy had finally commented. "Yes, my father had something of reputation in France for making the finest clocks, you see. Consequently, they sought me out to build it. It was meant to have been a present for King Louis…ah, I'm afraid I don't recall the occasion. I believe it was Commonwealth Day…oh, forgive me, I do rattle on. Would you like to see it?"

He didn't even wait for Danny to agree or disagree; his manner was reminiscent of an eager puppy as he bounced to his feet and dashed into the shop. Danny had barely a second to reflect on how like Jack Fenton the man was when he came bounding back with a long box clutched beneath one arm. He placed it almost reverently on the table before he opened it, as though it was a holy relic.

It was Clockwork's staff. Danny listened with half an ear while Mallory explained the particulars of its creation in a hushed, almost reverent tone. It looked different, although he couldn't place exactly why. Perhaps it was simply the lack of its owner's ghostly glow. He brushed his fingers across the clock face.

"I poured my soul into its creation," Mallory breathed, pleased that someone had shown an interest. "When they came back for it, I couldn't give it up. I…that is, I…lied to them. I told them that the task had become an impossible one, that even I couldn't complete such a thing. They were angry, and I didn't care. It's…part of me…"

"What's the button for?" Danny asked. He knew what Clockwork used it for, but that couldn't have been its original purpose.

He was almost shocked when Mallory laughed slightly and said, "It stops time. Perhaps not; however, it does stop the clock."

"But why?"

Mallory shrugged and reluctantly replaced the lid. "That is how it was specified. I was curious myself, yet the answer was vague. Apparently, His Majesty is obsessed with the way time marches past, and they thought giving him the means to stop it would be a fine gift."

The bell rang, and Mallory excused himself to take care of the customer. Danny used the opportunity to look at the staff again, shaking his head in disbelief. He had succeeded in finding Clockwork. Sadly, a living human wasn't going to be much help, which left his evil older self. He decided not to wonder what would happen if they had landed in different time periods.

"Do you truly like it so much?"

Danny jumped; he hadn't even heard Mallory come back. "Um…it's…." he stammered. "Yeah…I mean…Yeah, I like it."

The man gave a soft smile and sat down. "I understand. 'Tis little more than a novelty, I imagine. Tell me, Danny. How did you come to appear in my home in a flash of white light?"

The boy grinned nervously. "It's a long story that you probably wouldn't believe anyway."

"Well, I like stories," Mallory encouraged. "And if it is too unbelievable, I will merely assume it was dreaming brought on by that bump on your head. You may find that I believe a great deal, however. Especially as few people are capable of the entrance you made, and I do not care for alcohol."

Danny sighed and toyed with the notion of just leaving, but he found himself explaining the story with very little editing. After all, if Dan was in the time period with him, Mallory might be in danger. The more Danny stared at him, the more certain he became that this was, in fact, Clockwork; he even sported an identical scar across one eye. If his older self figured that out, he might try for a little preemptive revenge.

When he finally drifted to a halt, Mallory nodded knowingly. "Ah, fever dreams. I experienced those once. I had myself convinced that I was a duck swimming through the desert sands. Quite nonsensical, really."

Danny was almost tempted to argue the truthfulness of his experience, but would it really have mattered? Perhaps the man did believe him, after all; he honestly couldn't tell. "Um…I've really got to go, now," he said, standing. "Thanks for everything."

Mallory stood as well to escort him to the door. "If you must," he sighed. "You will return, won't you? I've rather enjoyed your presence."

"You'll definitely see me again," the boy confirmed. He gave a half-hearted wave and turned away, praying that Dan wouldn't cause much trouble and fearing that he would.


	4. Chapter Three

A/N: Ah, there you are, Random. I was getting worried that something was wrong.

* * *

Foolish, terrified, blabbering sheep. The man had actually wet himself mere moments before fainting. Well, it was no fun killing them if they weren't awake to scream. Besides, he wanted answers. There would be plenty of time to remake the future in his image if he felt so inclined, but right then, he just wanted revenge. 

"Useless idiotic humans…" Dan grumbled. He lifted the man up by his shirt collar, wrinkling his nose in distaste. When the man awoke, he was going to run screaming through the town and announce the ghost's presence to anyone with ears. Dan couldn't allow that, not if he wanted to catch his younger self by surprise. And he did want to. He got a certain delight out of playing with his victims, toying with them like cats do mice.

He considered overshadowing the man. Kill two birds with one stone, as the saying went. The man wouldn't be able to say a word, and Dan could hide from his young self. On the other hand, the man was a weak idiot who now gave off a very foul odor, and Dan would much rather have just killed him.

The door behind him opened with a faint creak; he dropped his victim and became invisible. After a moment, the newcomer exclaimed, "Father!" and rushed across the room to kneel next to him, crying.

Dan smirked and became visible again. "You'll do," he said, earning a startled gasp. The young woman tried to stand and turn and only succeeded in twisting around. She lashed out with her feet as the ghost strode forward. To her credit, she did not faint when her foot went right through his legs as though there was nothing there. She did try to scream, but her voice failed her. Then he was gone. She had just enough time to wonder if he had been a dream after all before something invaded her mind. She was too startled to put up much of a fight.

The invading spirit twisted her lips into a sneer as he felt her mind shut down out of terror. It was probably for the best that she didn't have to watch her arm raise, or see the blast of green ectoplasmic energy engulf her father. "Now," Dan muttered, testing his host's voice. "If I were my younger self, where would I hide?" He smoothed the girl's skirts so no one would question her appearance and strode from the house. Eventually, two other girls joined his meandering trek across the village. Apparently, they were friends with his host. He didn't pay much attention to them, and they didn't seem to notice.

Dan was violent and vicious, but he wasn't stupid. He didn't want to change the future because he might erase his own existence. As much as he would have liked to just start murdering people, he had no way of knowing which ones would affect his part of the future and which ones wouldn't. He wouldn't even have killed that man if his offspring hadn't walked through the door.

No, as much as he wanted to just do things the easy, he had to take care of his younger self quietly. It was very important to him that things happen the way they should, and-

He turned slightly as one of the annoying humans called out and repressed a sneer at the sight of his quarry. That was easy.

* * *

Amity Park circa 1775 was a very small town. Even the son of the greatest maker of clocks in all the land didn't attract much in the way of tourism. It didn't even have a name. It was just a collection of houses that had sprung up around a wayside inn. There was a general store. That was essentially the sum of the "village." 

Danny wasn't used to being stared at, and he didn't much care for it. Apparently, the townsfolk were just that desperate for entertainment. Of course, the fact that he seemed to have just appeared overnight didn't help any. He was almost afraid to ask questions; what could he have said? Somehow, he didn't think, "Hi, I'm looking for a scary, white-haired dude who may be flying around, trying to kill people" would be very well accepted.

At least, he didn't look out of place with the slightly oversized clothes Mallory had loaned him. He idly wondered what had been done with his old clothes as it occurred to him that he had forgotten to ask.

"Pardon me, sir," asked a shy voice. Danny stopped to face the speaker. "Is it true you're a demon that the clock maker conjured up?"

She seemed to be teasing, and she was just cute enough to get the boy woefully tongue-tied. "Um…uh, no?" he stammered, blushing. Two of the three farm girls giggled and seemed about to pursue the conversation, but an older woman called them back to chide them for talking to him. He hesitated for a moment before going on.

Something was going on around town. He had remained in human form in the hopes that it would give him an edge over his older self; as a human, he shouldn't set off Dan's ghost sense, while Dan would still set off his. It took about twenty-five minutes to check the entire village and determine that no ghosts were present. At a complete, confused loss, he wandered down the road for a few minutes and sat down on a rock.

He didn't know where he was. He couldn't even be certain it was Amity Park since none of the landmarks he could have used would exist for another two hundred years. If it was Amity Park, then they had only moved through time, and Dan should have been nearby. If it wasn't, they had moved through space as well, and Dan could have landed anywhere. Either way, there was also a possibility that he was still in the future.

Danny sighed and looked around without actually seeing anything. He needed to find a way into the Ghost Zone. Clockwork said that time moved forward and backward and all different directions for him. Maybe he existed as a ghost somewhere, even with his living self here.

And it was still equally possible that Mallory wasn't really Clockwork.

No, he had to be. There was no other way to explain that staff or the scar. He idly wondered how the man had acquired that scar. It was rather distinctive. He shoved the thought away and tried to focus on the issue at hand.

* * *

The older ghost stared at his younger self from the cover of the tree line. Apparently, his host's friends had expected her to go after the boy. There were some mutterings of "the village slut", but no one had challenged him. That was probably very lucky for them. 

He sifted around her memories enough to know that she visited the clock maker regularly, though her father seemed oblivious since his wife's death. She had been the first to find out about Danny's presence, though Goody Winthrop had spread the gossip. She didn't know who had first come up with the idea that Danny was a demon, but speculated that it was the pastor. He seemed convinced that Mallory was a witch because of that scar, despite the fact that everyone knew he'd gotten it falling from a tree in his youth.

Dan had an idea. It was a very good idea, he thought, and he couldn't help an evil chuckle. Without Clockwork around to rescue Danny's friends and family, they would be killed in the Nasty Burger explosion. Danny would go to Wisconsin; Vlad would separate him from Phantom who, in turn, would separate Plasmius. Dan would be created as he should be, and time travel need never enter into the equation.

And he could still get revenge on this Danny for locking him away for so long. All he needed was a catalyst. People looked up to the pastor, and the pastor looked down on Mallory. A word here; a confirmation there…he snuck back through the foliage and ran to the parish.

"Pastor Harrington!" he exclaimed, to all appearances, on the verge of tears. Although it grated, his host's knowledge of the lecherous pastor convinced him that a damsel in distress act from the repentant young sinner would get the fastest result.

Well, technically, the fastest way would be to simply overshadow the pastor, but he wasn't ready to kill the girl, yet. She was unmarried, and he had no idea where she fit into his younger self's ancestry. "Oh, Pastor Harrington!" he exclaimed again. "You were right! You were right the whole time!"

The man's disapproval suddenly metamorphosized into concern, superiority, and thinly-veiled lust. His tone was thickly patronizing as he laid a hand on the girl's head and put an arm around her shoulders and said, "Of course, my child. Tell me what troubles you."

"About the clock maker!" Dan was overacting, and he didn't care. It was all he could do to choke back the burning desire to incinerate the man where he sat. "He's a witch! His demon killed father!"

Pastor Harrington captured the girl's hands in his own. The look on his face implied that he didn't really believe the story but would be more than happy to play along. "Then we must pray," he said, bowing his head. Dan stopped for a moment to stare with an expression of the purest disgust, then rolled his host's eyes. The girl had obviously overestimated the pastor's particular brand of evil.

Well, nothing to do but go along with it. He had plenty of time.


	5. Chapter Four

Was it strange that it felt like some things were simply meant to be? It wasn't a vague feeling, or a thought, or even a premonition. It was as though he had been through it all before and simply forgotten how it went. Mallory and Emily had spoken at length on the subject of time, though he half-suspected she would much rather have pursued other lines of conversation.

She liked chess, she was intelligent, and she was interested in his clocks. He was in love.

She had said that everyone felt that way from time to time; that they'd been through something before. For some reason, he didn't have the heart to tell her that he felt that way all the time. When Danny had suddenly appeared in his home, he realized that he'd been expecting it. Everyone moment in the boy's company had been accompanied by the feeling of recollection, a vague sort of, "Oh, yes. That's how it went." That medallion he wore, especially. There was something about it.

After forty years, one would think he'd be used to it, and he was in a way. Ever since Danny arrived, however, the feeling was stronger than it had ever been. It felt like something was banging on his head, trying to remind him of something very important, and he couldn't remember what. It was maddening.

He sighed and glared at his reflection in a copper teapot. Emily was late. Emily was never late, and he was afraid something was wrong. He might even go so far as to say that he knew something was wrong. Now, if he could only remember…

A pounding noise startled him out of his reverie, and he rushed back into the shop. The door had been opened with such force that it pulled the little bell free and flung it across the room. There were men in doorway; they looked vaguely familiar, but it took him a second to remember why. Once he did, he had to mentally smack himself. Of course, they were familiar. They were his friends.

"Justin, what's happened?" he demanded, noting the expressions of barely repressed anger. "Is it Emily?"

"How dare you say her name? After all you've done?" The man reached out and shoved the nearest clock onto the floor.

Mallory flinched when it smashed, backing away at their approach. "What are you talking about?" he asked fearfully. "I have done nothing. I haven't even seen her today." At least, he didn't think he had. It was possible, he supposed, but even his faulty memory wouldn't have let him forget doing something worthy of his friends' reactions.

"Summoning demons!" Justin clarified. "Forcing a poor girl to whore herself for you! Murdering her father!" Behind him, those few who could squeeze into the shop continued smashing whatever they could. Behind them, the rest of the town's men crowded into the door. One of them had a musket.

Mallory shook his head, unable to voice his denial. He wasn't surprised. He didn't understand why he couldn't be surprised, but he wasn't. Sad, yes, but not shocked. He had expected it. He had been waiting for it.

And he didn't know why.

"No…" he managed weakly. "I would never-"

"Don't lie to them, clock maker," interrupted a voice that, impossibly, came from behind him. He turned and backed into the edge of his counter, attempting to keep the mob in view. It was Emily, though he didn't know how. Her face was a mask of barely concealed hatred, and she carried his clockwork staff as though considering whether or not to smash it. "Why don't you tell them about this witch's wand you forced me to help you make?"

"You wanted to help…" Mallory protested. Suddenly, he realized that he had backed himself into the corner and had nowhere left to go. "Please, you know me," he tried to beg. He could hear the pastor outside, shouting denouncements. Justin said something venomous, but Mallory's attention was on Emily, silently begging her to just tell him why. She sneered, and for just a moment, he thought her beautiful blue eyes were blood red. Then she swung.

* * *

Danny was hopelessly lost. He knew that, but somehow, it didn't really connect until he saw the world from above. Somehow, it was all more real from up there. He didn't know what to do. Everyone he knew who could possibly help wouldn't be born for a few hundred years. Even if there were ghosts that were so inclined, he had no way to reach them. He couldn't check the entire planet for possible ghost portals; it would take a lifetime. 

The next town over was just ahead, though it wasn't much bigger than the future Amity Park had been. Danny drifted back toward the ground, uncertain whether he should walk into town or fly. He didn't think there would be cause to speak to people, but…

And then he realized that he was just afraid to speak to them for some reason. It didn't make any sense; why should he be worried? What could they do to him, anyway? It was almost a relief when his ghost sense went off and brought a halt to the internal struggle.

He saw the grave before he saw the ghost. It was a weathered cross made out of rock, sitting at the junction of a crossroad. A large crow sat on it, pecking at some invisible speck. Then it turned one glowing red eye in the boy's direction, and he realized that it was the ghost.

"Caw!" it announced.

Danny was about to dismiss it and move on when realized that it had actually said, "Caw." "Did you just talk?" he asked hesitantly.

It flapped it wings and twitched, hopping from one foot to the other. "Naw!"

The boy stared. It suddenly struck him as very strange that he considered the talking ghost crow to be less threatening than a bunch of humans. "Yes, you did," he protested.

"Naw!" it said again, this time with a mischievous glint in its eyes.

Danny scoffed. "Whatever. I don't have time for this. I have to find a way into the Ghost Zone."

He had barely made it a few feet past when the creature piped up, "Death on wings! Zephyr calls! Caw! Caw! Time is dead! Time is dead! Caw!" Responding to a voice that only it could hear, the crow took off in a shower of green-tinted, black feathers. Danny raced after it, his mind awhirl with denial.

It couldn't be Mallory; how would the creature even know? Who or what was Zephyr? And more importantly, what was that crowd of people doing outside Mallory's shop? The man himself lay in the dirt, the victim of a very savage beating. His staff was in pieces, the clock broken and bloodied from it's violent meeting with his face. Someone swatted at the crow as it tried to land on the body, and it flew to a higher vantage, cawing out things that were probably best left not translated. Danny froze just long enough to take it all in and to notice the pastor and the girl at the edge of the mob, then dove into the middle of it all with a cry of, "Leave him alone!"

There were shouts and gasps, but he was oblivious as he kneeled to his friend. How did people become ghosts? Was it unfinished business, like so many experts claimed? Was it a violent death? Was it supposed to happen that way, or had his presence changed things? If Clockwork didn't exist…

"In the name of the Lord," shouted a quaking voice, snagging the boy's attention. "I banish thee back from whence thee…thou cameth…camest…er…" The pastor trembled under the glare of those glowing green eyes. Despite all his grand words about himself, he had never faced the supernatural before. He wasn't even a real pastor; he was a swindler. He had no idea what he was doing.

Danny stood up. He didn't actually have any kind of plan, or even the presence of mind to figure something out. However, his expression must have convinced the mob otherwise. The pastor was the first to break; he ran, crying, all the way back to his church to barricade himself. As though it were some kind of signal, everyone else fled, but Danny wasn't paying attention anymore. He kneeled next to Mallory again, his mind racing in little circles.

"I shouldn't have left," he whispered.

Someone muttered something that sounded like, "Pathetic." He didn't bother to turn. Somehow, he wasn't surprised. "Without Clockwork around to meddle, your future is sealed," Dan said with great relish.

It was on Danny's tongue to argue, but he realized that his older self was right. He had been more than willing to follow that path before he found out where it would lead. Without Clockwork around to show him… "How do you know he doesn't exist?" Danny asked, turning. "Maybe this is what created him!"

"Oh, please," the ghost scoffed. "This wouldn't have happened without me around to start it."

"Well, maybe that won't matter," Danny persisted.

"He died violently. Even if he becomes a ghost, he'll be a violent one." Dan chuckled knowingly. "He's not going to help you." Danny shook his head; it couldn't be over. They were still there, weren't they? As if in answer, the ghost added, "We should be disappearing soon. At least, you should. I will be going back to the future to make sure nothing goes wrong this time.

"How? Clockwork's staff is broken!"

"Maybe so, but I still have this." Dan held up the medallion for the boy's inspection. It was probably the one Danny had been wearing. He tried to lunge for it, but a blast of energy knocked him back. By the time he found his bearings again, his older self was gone, and the girl was crying over Mallory's body.

She looked up at Danny's approach, too grief-stricken to notice his ghostly glow. "Why?" she begged, sobbing. "He said he wanted to ask father for my hand. He said we would go today, together. He said he would take meto France."

Someone braved the ghost boy's presence to pull Emily away and force her inside. It was like time simply stopped. There was no sound, no life. Even the wind barely moved, making a half-hearted attempt to stir up the dust across Mallory's cloak. Danny idly wondered how long it would take to disappear and if he would feel anything. Something rattled inside the empty building. His ghost sense went off.

He didn't know what to think, and his brain refused to cooperate on the subject. That couldn't be it. That couldn't be the end. His ghost sense went off.It didn't seem real. After all he'd been through…

He shuddered lightly, and his mind snapped back into focus. His ghost sense was going off. Mindful of Dan's claim that Clockwork would be violent now, he became invisible and slipped inside, unsure whether he hoped it would be Clockwork or not.

The ghost regarded a broken cuckoo clock with curiosity. He leaned against the ghost of his staff in a leisurely posture, and looked in Danny's direction, apparently able to see him. "I should remember you," he announced. "At least, I think I should. Have I been dreaming?"

"Uh, you died," Danny answered warily, fading back into view after a moment.

"Did I? Hm…" He seemed more perturbed than anything. He certainly didn't seem violent. "Is this where I lived?"

Jack and Maddie Fenton had a theory that ghosts forgot who they were when they were alive. That wasn't something Danny had ever really thought about; by the time they mattered to him, their lives were a moot point. Some seemed to remember some things; other didn't remember much. Very few of them really cared one way or the other. He wondered if they all wondered at first or if Clockwork was unique in that. He nodded. "Yeah, and you made all these. And your name's Mallory." He added the last part as an afterthought, not quite sure whether he should mention it or not.

The ghost stared around in newfound interest. "Mallory…ill-fated…how fitting?" He made a noise that was part quiet scoff and part sad sigh. "And you?"

"Danny Phantom," the boy supplied, relaxing considerably. If Mallory's ghost were going to attack, he probably would already have done so. A thought struck. "Hey, can you control time yet?"

The ghost blinked. "Should I be able to?"

"You can in the future. You're part of the reason I'm here." Danny hesitated to briefly wonder if he should explain, then plowed ahead anyway.

"You call me Clockwork?" the ghost mused shortly after he stopped talking. "I like that. It's…familiar." He seemed to sigh, possibly a habit left over from actually having lungs. "All right. I don't know what I'm doing, but you say that I can…and we need to stop this older version of you. Here. Come over here. If this works, I don't want to leave you behind."

Danny complied and drifted closer. Clockwork tilted his head and stared at the face of his clock. He twisted the button, frowned, and closed his eyes for a few minutes. "Ah, I remember…" he muttered. The boy thought that was a strange thing to say, then Clockwork hit the button.

When they could see again, they were surrounded by a lush, prehistoric forest. Something roared in the distance. Danny dropped his head into his hands. "This isn't it."

There was a pause. "Are you sure?" Danny nodded. There was another pause, and he looked up to see the ghost staring around in confusion. "I followed your older self," he began weakly. Then he shook his head as though to clear it and added, in a somewhat stronger voice, "We followed your older self. If we're here, he's here."

Danny was about to argue the point, but Clockwork seemed so sure. He almost seemed like the Master of Time he would become, and the boy had to fight a moment to not think of that as "his old self." He nodded and turned to scan the scenery. "Okay, then. Let's go find him."

* * *

A/N: Sorry for the delay. It's been kind of weird lately, and this chapter didn't want to be written for some reason. I got the first part okay, but I must have started the second part over four times before I finally figured out how it was supposed to go. And my muse has been playing Fable and Animal Crossing for the past few days. _/snickers/_

Also, who would be interested in yet another horror-themed game crossover? I've got one in my head for Eternal Darkness that I'm kind of hesitant to write. I don't know; I'm worried you guys might be a little burned out on the angst after the last three and then Dance of Pales (which wasn't actually a crossover, but did feature Silver, so...) I've got it tentatively up for number twenty-five, but if you all would rather I wait longer, just say the word. I haven't actually started yet, so it's not like I'd have to change anything. And...fortunately or not, Silver will not be in it.


	6. Chapter Five

The creature tilted its head in the vague hope that the crunchy little tidbit hanging in the air in front of its nose would magically become less confusing at a different angle. Alas, it was not to be. The little thing was clearly not a fellow predator, which automatically made it prey. Prey hurt on occasion, but it was usually larger then. And it never escaped actually being swallowed. It was a mystery, or would have been if the tyrannosaur actually cared to consider it.

Dan laughed in general superiority at the giant reptile's confusion. It was no wonder they died out, he thought. He flung another ectoplasmic energy blast at its eyes, and it finally seemed to get the message. With a roar of pain, it wandered away to find an easier meal. The ghost held his position for a few moments out of some misplaced sense of pride before drifting back to the ground.

He was strong enough to defend himself, but still weaker than he liked to be. It took a lot of power to travel through time using the medallion, and it would take time to get that power back. In the meantime, he leaned against a tree to think about what had gone wrong.

Was it possible that his ability to hone in on the exact moment necessary last time had been Clockwork's doing? Dan didn't like that idea, but he had to consider it as a possibility. He had thought that he simply needed to hold a destination in mind, but that hadn't worked. Perhaps it was something else, something he had done the first time without realizing it.

Something hissed. He fired a blast without bothering to look and didn't pay much attention to the creature's dying squeal. They were just dumb animals, after all. What did he care if they lived or died?

Although, wasn't there a theory that just killing a butterfly would cause dinosaurs to rule the earth? The last thing Dan wanted was to return to his time and find that he was lord of the Planet of Dumb Lizards. He resolved to look next time and went back to his musings.

Although, that brought up an interesting thought. He held a device that would enable him to exist no matter what changed in the past. He could do anything he wanted and never erase himself from existence as long as he wore Clockwork's medallion. All he had to do was make sure it could never be parted from him.

And that was the easy part.

* * *

Clockwork had been surprisingly alarmed by the sudden onset of his temporal shifting shortly after their arrival. Danny felt a little guilty; there was something funny about having to explain to the poor ghost that he just did that for some reason and had never explained why. Though, to be fair, Danny had never bothered to ask. 

Apparently, Clockwork had noticed that Danny was trying not to laugh and had sent him ahead, ostensibly to rest. The boy broke into fresh giggles at the remembered look of indignation, so out of place on the child-like visage.

Something roared in the distance, and he forced his mind back his current crisis. He didn't know how fast his older self could fly, but if Clockwork needed rest, Dan certainly would. He couldn't have gotten far. Danny just wasn't sure in which direction he had gone.

Then his ghost sense went off. The bushes rustled, and he dropped into a battle stance. He charged his fists and tried to see through the leaves, certain that his older self would charge out at any moment. It crossed his mind to use his Ghostly Wail; that had worked quite well last time, but he didn't want to do any more damage to the past than was necessary. He was just about to fire when his stalker poked its head out. Laughing in relief, he released the gathered ectoplasm. "You almost got yourself hurt, you know," he informed the little ghost.

The coelurosaur tilted its head and squeaked, almost as though it understood. It snapped at a bug and stepped forward to stare. Danny leaned down, awed in spite of himself. Ghost or not, it was still a real dinosaur, and the first one he had seen. He couldn't help but wonder what Lancer would have thought to be standing there, and the little creature took that moment to lunge forward and latch onto his nose.

Danny fell back onto his rear, swatting at it and shouting, "Get off! Get off of me!" The thing whistled and shrieked as it dodged the attack, then clamped down hard on his fingers. Biting back a fresh howl of pain, he tried to shake it loose. Eventually, he managed to pull it away and held it out at arm's length. "You!" he began angrily, not yet certain what he planned to do with it. It almost looked innocent for a split section before twisting around to sink its teeth into his wrist. He pulled it off again and flung it away, and waited for it to vanish into the foliage while he rubbed his aching wrist, fingers, and nose.

Were those things poisonous? He didn't remember them from the movies. Torn between pain and worry about the potential ghost poison, it took him several moments to notice that his ghost sense was still going off. Once it did register, he dismissed it as simply being his previous attacker and glared into the bushes.

Something hissed. Something growled. Danny turned slightly and saw his second ghost dinosaur of the era. It didn't look quite as harmless. If there was one thing _Jurassic Park_ had done for pre-history, it had made raptors a national icon.

It had been dead long enough that all traces of its living façade had vanished; its body was that sickly green color of ectoplasm with which he was most familiar. It stared at him through demonic red eyes and cautiously strode forward, bobbing its head in time to each step.

There was something about raptors, something very important that he had forgotten. Tucker had briefly given in to the "dino-craze" after the first movie came out, and Danny and Sam had been subjected to long dissertations on the theories of raptors. Supposedly, the head bobbing was a friendly gesture, but there was something…

It paused barely two feet away to open its mouth in a loud hiss and rear its head back as though ready to snap. Danny was a little too shell-shocked from the whole situation to remember that he could fly. He lurched backwards just as the creature's jaws snapped closed centimeters from his face.

Suddenly, the large ferns to either side of the ghost boy erupted with hissing, screeching raptors. He shouted in alarm and scrambled away; they hunted in packs. How could he forget that they hunted in packs? He dropped through the ground to evade them and flew back out somewhere behind the first, thinking he would be safe around the treetops. He managed to rest for about two seconds before the ghosts flew up to join him.

Clearly, Dan would have to wait.

* * *

Dan smirked in vicious delight at the screeching of raptors chasing after some prey. He thought he heard a human voice mixed with the avian, but shrugged it off as unimportant. It was either some creature that just sounded human at a distance or a caveman. Because it couldn't have been his younger self; he was trapped some time in the distant future, possibly with a murderous ghost bent on bloody vengeance. There was absolutely no way Danny could have followed him. 

He closed his eyes, concentrated on a time during the reign of Caesar, and used his power to activate the time medallion that now resided inside him. The time portal appeared around him and everything went dark for a moment, then his vision came back. His first though was very nearly wonderment at how futuristic ancient Rome looked. Fortunately, he caught himself and groaned, "Oh, now what?"

* * *

Clockwork repressed a grin as he stared at the frozen tableau. There was something amusing about a ghost boy being chased by flying reptiles, especially when the boy in question could have easily outwitted them if he'd given it a thought. The ghost shook his head and indulged in a quiet chuckle, then tapped the button on his staff. 

"They're not really raptors, you know," he mentioned idly as Danny looked around in confusion. "Raptors are smaller, and they usually have feathers. That movie wasn't very accurate. Hardly any of those creatures were even from the Jurassic period."

Danny started to mention something about not caring, then stopped. "Why do you know that?" he asked suspiciously.

Clockwork smiled apologetically. "I don't know. There are many things in my head that I don't understand yet. I'm not even sure what a movie is; I just know that _Jurassic Park_ is one. I think it's something like a play?"

"…Something like that."

There was a pause. "You're laughing at me again, aren't you?"

"Sorry," Danny replied, though the sentiment was lost amid poorly stifled giggles. In a blatant attempt to change the subject, he suddenly exclaimed, "When are we, anyway?"

The Master of Time glared for a moment longer before settling back against some kind of radio tower. "Go find out," he directed, with a smug and secretive little smile.

He was hiding something. For some reason, that made Danny feel better.

Clockwork watched him fly off into the City of Glass, waiting until he was out of sight to sigh and stare down at his hands. He remembered being human. Most ghosts didn't, and he hadn't at first. The memories came back to him, however; and easier than the things he couldn't possibly remember.

He had known Danny. Technically, he would know Danny, but it seemed easier to think in past tense. It was like having amnesia and slowly reacquiring his memories after having gone back in time to before he was supposed to remember. Except that he remembered things that happened before he was born. It was the sort of thing he had trouble saying, which troubled him further because he thought Danny might be able to shed some light. Always assuming he could make the boy understand, of course, which he doubted.

"The City of Glass," he quietly mused, deciding to focus on something else for a while. Built over the ruins of some kind of disaster (he thought it might have been an earthquake, but couldn't remember), it had become a utopia for all intents and purposes. At least, in appearance. It wasn't a bad place, as such, but it was a totalitarian state. In fact, in an interesting twist of irony, Danny was indirectly responsible for it.

The ideology was based around the fact that ghosts needed to be eradicated. This was accomplished by a complex system of machinery that, over time, had actually succeeded in keeping the human spirit from transforming into ectoplasmic energy upon its death.

Humans started having trouble giving live births. No one could understand why, but women who took a government-issued pill of some mysterious substance that glowed with an ethereal green light often had better luck than women who did not. Suddenly, the government had a means to control the population. It had all spiraled out of control, then.

Few people believed ghosts had ever existed, but they continued to do as they were told. They were used to it.

"Why do I know that?" Clockwork whispered.


	7. Chapter Six

The man wore a bored expression as he sat at his desk. Next to him, an equally bored woman smiled brightly as she rattled off whatever text appeared on the prompt screen. It was a world news anecdote; essentially unimportant but designed to let people know that no matter what happened, everything was under control. That was very important, especially as she handed over the attention of the camera. "And now, Greg with today's top story. Greg?"

"Thank you, Stacy," he replied as he had hundreds of times before. Everything was under control… "As we all know by now, the War on Ghosts has escalated in recent years with the passing of famed scientist, Himuro Takamine. Takamine, of course, was the biggest advocator against the Fentonian Process. Authorities now believe that he found some way to circumvent the Process and has been leading the so-called 'Spirit Squad' in their crusade. City officials have this to say…"

"Spirit squad?" Danny muttered skeptically, staring at the holographic projection of the newsroom from the other side of a store window. Somehow, that bothered him even more than the "Fentonian Process." He scoffed quietly and resumed his invisible flight.

Despite the circumstances of his presence there, he couldn't help but stare around in awe while he searched for his older self. The City of Glass was well named, he thought. Although the sun was hidden behind a bright green ghost shield, the shimmering skyscrapers glinted like diamonds. He didn't think they were actually made of glass, though. While it looked like glass at a distance, closer inspection revealed that it was a rubber-like substance. The stuff was a pale, foggy grey that seemed like it should be translucent, but was not. It was an interesting optical illusion.

He turned his attention to the ground, where people walked or rode around on motorized scooters. There were no cars in sight, flying or otherwise. For some reason, he always thought there would be flying cars. And space travel, but there was no sign of that, either. That was a little sad for the would-be astronaut, and he decided that the City of Glass simply wasn't a spaceport.

Suddenly, a painful wail cut through the air. His first thought, clapping his hands over his ears, was that he had found Dan. Then he noticed the flashing red lights and realized it was a siren. A few of the people below stared around in mute confusion. Around them, others panicked and ran into the nearest building, while those who remained walked in a calm fashion, chatting as though nothing was wrong. Above it all, even louder than the siren, was the voice.

"Citizens!" it announced. "Do no panic. Everything is under control. Please enter the nearest structure in a quick and orderly fashion. Repeat: everything is under control."

Danny wasn't sure what hurt worse: his ears or his head. No one below seemed bothered by the sound, but it pierced his mind like Fright Knight's Soul Shredder. He bit back a pained scream, then realized that he had started to scream after all. In desperation, he threw himself toward the nearest wall, hoping to phase inside and escape the sound. He hit the side at 112 miles per hour and had just enough time to see future versions of the Guys in White close in on him before he blacked out.

* * *

"What is it?" someone whispered. He was subsequently shushed.

Danny groaned involuntarily at the ringing in his ears and pried his eyes open. He shut them again almost immediately and cringed; his captors had aimed a painfully bright light directly into his eyes. He tried to turn his head, found he couldn't, and discovered that he had been restrained. The table had been angled so that he was mostly upright, but the lack of any support under his feet meant that the restraints were biting into his arms and legs.

"Where-" he began, but the back of someone's hand suddenly collided with his mouth, and he finished with a pained whine.

"You'll speak when you're spoken to, ghost!" the man barked. And he did bark; his voice was reminiscent of a Great Dane's. "Type! Now!"

Danny squinted at the darkened shape that stood just to the side of the light. "What…type? I don't-"

Another slap. "What type of ghost are you?"

Type of ghost? He'd never really thought about it before. He seemed to have characteristics from several different types. The man seemed about to hit him again, so he simply blurted out, "Phantom!"

There was some murmured discussion that he was unable to follow, but the gathering of people had temporarily blocked out the light. A few of them were obvious scientists; they seemed very excited, but scientists always did when faced with a puzzle. Danny didn't need to look to know that he had changed back. The GiW by contrast were agitated.

"Three hundred years…" someone grumbled.

A very self-satisfied scientist announced, "I told you we should invest more research into ghost types, not that anyone listens to me. I told you all the ghosts were probably mutating out there, and we needed to study them, but no…"

"Ghosts don't mutate! They're dead!" Danny recognized the voice of his interrogator and was mildly surprised to note that the man could have been Walker's long lost twin if not for the fact that he was very much alive.

"Then explain that!" All eyes turned on the ghost boy who grinned sheepishly. "It's clearly not possessed. It's like it's…half ghost and half human somehow…"

"It doesn't conform to a definitive type, either," someone in back piped up. "We've seen crossbreeds before, but nothing like this. That thing has banshee in it." Danny blinked and returned the suddenly amazed stares with bewilderment, wondering why that was so alarming. He was doomed to never find out.

An alarm went off. The boy cringed against the sound, but it wasn't the piercing, ghost-debilitating wail of the last one. "Another one?" Walker's clone exclaimed angrily. "Not a single ghost in the city for three hundred years, and suddenly there's two?"

Three, Danny thought irrationally. Or two and a half. He watched the GiW charge from the room with all save two of the scientists in close pursuit. They all stared at each other for several moments, but no one wanted to be the first to speak. Eventually, someone shut off the light. While he blinked against the after images, the remaining scientists left the room.

Everything was quiet. Too quiet. Painfully quiet. He tugged at the restraints around his arms and tried to move his legs, but it was a hopeless cause. He became intangible just to be thorough; unsurprisingly, that didn't work, either. He idly wondered if they would fall for it if he went invisible…

A chill momentarily raised goose bumps on his arms and turned his breath to a visible fog. He'd never been so happy or so worried to feel the presence of a ghost before. "Who's there?" he demanded quietly, hopeful that it was just Clockwork come to rescue him.

"I don't believe it…" said a low voice. "It is you, isn't it?"

"Who's asking?" The restraints snapped open. The boy dropped gratefully to his feet, then turned to face his rescuer.

His armor seemed to be made from the same substance as most of the buildings. Other than that, he didn't look much different. "It's been a long time, whelp," Skulker said, grinning delightedly. "Remember me?"

"How could I forget you?" Danny returned wryly. He transformed and floated up to eye level. It was the distant future, he knew. Suddenly, telling everyone he was from the past didn't seem like a very good idea. "So what happened to hunting me down?" he asked cautiously.

Skulker sighed and looked at the floor. "Maybe one day… You'd better come with me. It won't be long before they figure out it was a trick."

Danny hesitated for a surprised moment before racing through the door after him. "Whoa, wait a minute," he exclaimed, drifting alongside. "You set this up just to rescue me?"

"Actually, we set this up to sabotage the Machine. Finding you here was pure luck."

Suddenly, the lights flickered, and Danny bit off a request for clarification. Skulker edged up to a corner and looked around it with some kind of periscope attachment. After what seemed like an eternity, he motioned the boy to stay quiet and move forward. "Our distraction is late," he whispered.

"Then what was that?"

"I'm not sure," the ghost confessed. "They hack-proofed the system. Technus must be having trouble bypassing it."

"Why aren't there guards?"

"They don't think they need them." Skulker replaced his periscope and turned. "Which works out well for us, since I have to use Plan B, now. Wait here. I'll…no." He stopped to think. "Can you still be human?" After Danny's somewhat bewildered nod, he went on. "Wait for the bang, then go straight down this hall, turn left, pass three more halls, and there's a big control room on the right. You can't miss it. Find out what happened to Technus."

He didn't wait for Danny's agreement, but slipped around the corner and hurried down the hall, possible trying to make up lost time. Danny shook his head and glanced around furtively. It felt strange to be helping his former enemies. It felt even worse that Skulker seemed to expect it without question. What had happened to the future?

Should he help or not? The nagging voice inside his head said to chase after Skulker and ruin their plans. On the other hand, a lot could happen in three hundred years. Maybe they had a good reason?

Ghosts were evil; most, at least. What could happen that was so drastic it would make ghosts the good guys and humans the bad guys? And what was the Machine? He could hear the inflection Skulker put on the word, differentiating it from lesser words. The hunter had said it with almost unconscious disdain.

The lights flickered again as a violent explosion rocked the foundations of the building. Danny held his ground for about two seconds. He didn't know why he was flying off to rescue Technus; he just hoped it was the right choice.

* * *

A/N: Um...is it good news or bad news that this might wind up being even longer than the eleven chapters (plus prologue and epilogue) of my trilogy? I'm not making any promises, but there's just so much I want to say...

I have this obsessive love for patterns and consistency that has led every story to be just about the same length. But I think, even as I'm writing this, that I've had some kind of breakthrough. Suddenly, it was like the universe made sense, and I knew what I've been doing wrong all this time. I can't articulate it in words really, and it may just be the iron-deficiency-induced depression that's been lifted once I started remembering my vitamins again. But anyway, what I'm trying to say is that, while I know some of my stories have been kind of rushed, it didn't really hit me until just recently. I'm going to try to do better in the future, and this might even be something I address in the slow (so slow) process of editing my old works.


	8. Chapter Seven

The City of Glass was a pathetic place filled with paranoid idiots. Dan stared down at them, amazed at how little could change in five hundred years. With all their technological advances and medical achievements, they were still worthless ants. They had invented a substance that ghosts couldn't phase through, used it to build their entire city, and promptly forgot that ghosts knew how to use doors. He had simply blasted it down in an effort to escape the Ghost Siren.

The future had an entire world full of empty-headed sheep. One in particular blubbered on the floor behind him. It really was ridiculous. At least the President had enough presence of mind to know that he would very quickly die if he didn't answer the questions. "So this…Fentonian Process…" he began, putting a derisive sneer on the name. "It converts ectoplasm into usable energy?"

Ever eager to please, and thus live a few moments longer, the President nodded frantically. The walls were made of ectoplasm. Those scooters everyone rode ran on ectoplasm. The entire city, no, world ran on ectoplasm. And the less actual ectoplasm there was, the smaller the population become. Takamine had theorized that what people called ghost energy was actually life energy, that ectoplasm itself was simply a byproduct, and that by getting rid of it, they were getting rid of the source of life.

Dan didn't much care what humans did with their spare time. If they wanted to eradicate themselves from existence, that was perfectly fine with him. The Machine, however, was very interesting. If the process could be interrupted halfway through, just after the ectoplasmic energy was extracted, he could absorb it and become even more powerful. There wasn't a great deal left after five centuries, but at the very least, it would enable him to travel through time without becoming fatigued. It might even turn out to be the missing factor that would let him pinpoint the exact moment he wanted.

"Take me to this Machine of yours," he commanded, turning.

The President froze; the expression on his face was reminiscent of a rabbit faced with a fox. "I…I can't…" he stammered. "The shields…no ghost can enter…"

Dan levitated the man up to eye level and smiled in mock sweetness. "You can't?"

He had gone beyond pale and was turning a little green. It was amazing he hadn't just fainted. "E-e-even if you kill me," he squeaked. "Only Agent Hunter can take it down!"

"Then we'll have to find him, won't we?"

The President gasped as his aggressor suddenly vanished. He had just enough time to wonder hopefully if he had been spared before something shoved his mind into a far corner and took over. Like most humans, he simply drifted into unconsciousness.

Dan gave an involuntary shudder. He had to force himself not to abandon his host. There was something very wrong with the human's body, something that made it almost inhospitable. It felt almost lifeless. He wondered if all humans were like that, and how they could survive if they were. It was enough to make even the sociopath ill. He fought off the sudden desire to grind his host's teeth and stepped out into the chaos his entrance had created.

Half of them were Guys in White, futilely trying to locate him. The other half were workers, scrambling to fix all the damage he had done on his mad flight. He had naturally gone invisible as soon as the dampened sound allowed him to resume thinking, but it hadn't stopped him from crashing into things in blind pain. It wasn't until the sound finally cut off completely that he had decided to hide in the first room he came to and found the President of the Free World Nations. It was a rather redundant title.

Whose bright idea was it to make Amity Park the capital of the world, anyway?

"You!" he snapped, grabbing the first white-clad ghost hunter to run past.

"Mr. President!" the GiW exclaimed. "There's a ghost; you should be in-"

"Agent Hunter! Where is he?"

"Looking for the ghost," the young man answered helplessly.

Dan cursed mentally and entertained a thought about how nice it would be to take out some aggression. He settled for an aggravated huff and said, "Find him." Without waiting for the response, he walked back into the President's office to get out of his host for a while. The sheer wrongness made his skin crawl.

* * *

There was a familiar shout of alarm somewhere ahead followed by a scream of fear. Someone yelled something that sounded defiant, and a young scientist charged through the large threshold, took one look at Danny, and scrambled off in the opposite direction. The boy hesitated to wonder again what he thought he was doing before diving through the door… 

…and straight into a ghost shield. He fell back on his rear and hit his elbows against the floor. And that was why Skulker wanted to know if he could still be human; looking back, he should have realized. He reverted to human just long enough to get inside before switching back.

As the shouting and sounds of weapons' fire implied, the control room was utter chaos. Wiring ripped itself loose from consoles to combat the various ecto-weapons. Entire workstations came to life and tried to pound the mortal combatants. It was clearly Technus' doing; the monitors displayed his favored computerized face. So, where was the ranting? Where was the laughing? Where were the yelling and the histrionics? Technus was all business, completely professional. It was scary.

The electronic assault froze for the barest fraction of a second. It was hardly perceptible unless one was watching. "Wha…?" he started, the eyes of the nearest monitor suddenly focused on Danny. "Phantom?" He grinned. "Is that you?"

"Uh…what's going on?" was Danny's lame reply.

Technus hooted joyously. For just a moment, he almost seemed like the narcissistic egomaniac Danny knew. "I'm stuck!" he announced without missing a beat in his defense. "They put up a firewall behind me. I can't phase out because they've been making everything out of Fentonian Glass the last few years. And! I've got an anti-virus nibbling at me! Get me out of here!"

"What do you want me to do?" the boy shot back, a little too busy fending off humans to pay much attention.

"Actually, if you could just keep them busy, that would help tremendously." And without further ado, all the computers shut down and dropped to the floor.

"Get the system back online!" someone yelled. "You, two! The system! Don't let him get away!"

"Where'd they all come from?" someone else grumbled. Danny was too busy diving beneath a blast to hear the answer.

He was fighting humans. Why was he fighting humans? Why had he agreed to help? And why did it seem right? Technus had been overjoyed to see him, and like Skulker, had expected his help without question.

He could hear a battle rage in the hall; Skulker had finally arrived. He charged to Danny's side. The boy nearly demanded to know how he had gotten through, but an errant shot knocked him to the ground. He got unsteadily to his feet and tried to clear his head, then realized that Skulker was protecting him. Struck anew by the wrongness of the situation, it was a second longer before he noticed that he had changed back.

"Come on!" the armored ghost called. He hefted Danny under one arm and ran from the room, heedless of any humans who might have been in his way. Once they cleared the shield, he muttered, "Now, change back and follow me." Still feeling way in over his head, the boy complied.

"What's happening?" he demanded, trying to make things fall into some semblance of order. "What about Technus?"

Skulker flashed a grin and tapped the side of his head; Danny assumed it was a reference to some kind of communicator. "He's out. Stay behind me for a minute." He twisted around to fire one last shot at their pursuers, then crashed headlong into the wall.

Danny paused for a moment to wonder why the ghost hadn't simply phased through before ducking past the rubble. He continued to follow through several sections of hallway and smashed wall, once dropping down a hole in the floor. After that, the humans seemed to lose them, and Skulker slowed down marginally to plot a more economical escape. Eventually, they found their way through the window of an empty room. The boy snickered as Skulker tried to fit his armor through too small of a space.

"Why don't you go intangible?" he asked, unable to restrain his curiosity any longer.

The ghost gave him a strange look and took a few seconds to think before he replied. "I was wondering why you looked like that," he whispered. Louder, he continued, "You don't remember what happened, do you? You must have been here the whole time."

Danny made a vague, noncommittal noise. After a moment, Skulker shook his head and led the way through the back alleys.

"It's Fentonian Glass," he explained. "Ghost can't affect it. We can't phase through it, or turn it invisible, or even destroy it. It's basically processed ectoplasm. It just absorbs everything we throw at it."

He went on to explain Takamine's theory as the set up for what Danny really wanted to know. After hearing it, the boy had a pretty good idea why the ghosts seemed to expect his help. Good and evil had become meaningless words. The humans were killing themselves off. The ghosts weren't trying to stop them; they were simply trying to save themselves. Danny's future self had chosen to help in an effort to save them all. They had fought alongside each other for two centuries.

"Then, you just vanished," Skulker went on. "It was about three hundred years ago, give or take. You came here; I don't even remember why, now. No one's seen you since. We tried to rescue you, but we couldn't get through the perimeter shield until today."

Danny thought about that for a while. Next to him, Skulker seemed worried. In fact, he seemed to be ashamed, perhaps that he hadn't tried harder to get through. The boy shook his head. "What's so special about today?"

"Today?" Skulker chuckled evilly. "Takamine designed the shield. He told us how to get through."

"I thought he died." There was a pause. "Oh…"

Snickering quietly, Skulker removed what looked like a pair of mechanical earmuffs from some hidden compartment and handed them over. "Here. Technus has to set the alarm off again to get us out."

Danny had just enough time to put the device over his ears and say, "Wait; 'again?'" He was effectively interrupted by the sudden wail of the Ghost Alarm. Although plenty of sound made it past the device, the specific pitch that caused him so much pain earlier did not. They waited for a few moments until the streets were clear, then started on a mad dash for the perimeter shield.

The shield was generated by a series of towers, he noticed as they got closer. When they were less than a dozen feet away, the alarm shut down, and Technus abandoned his post. The three ghosts fled through a hole that mysteriously appeared in the shield and out into the ruin beyond. They didn't stop until they were nearly out of sight and hidden inside some aging structure. It was a long time before anyone spoke.

"Well, that was productive," said a voice. Danny jumped slightly and turned to see a very familiar young woman sitting across Skulker's shoulders. Somewhere along the way, she had tossed aside her top hat and tails for a lab coat and glasses. Her hair, once short and dusty blonde, was shoulder length and featured a shock of grey that she probably thought made her look distinguished. Or she was still trying to imitate her father. Could have gone either way, really.

"Kat?" Danny ventured.

"There will be time for reunions later," Skulker interrupted, though he seemed loath to. "We won't be safe here for much longer."

"We could go through the Ghost Zone," Technus offered.

Kat made a panicked noise in the back of her throat. "Oh, no way! Not again!" She huffed, but otherwise ignored her father's laughter to turn to Danny. "They've been mining ectoplasm," she explained. "When it's not too dark for me to see, it's too bright."

"Unlike the rest of us," Technus announced. "Who actually have eyes!"

"Oh, bite me, old man!"

"Enough, you two," Skulker broke in. He exchanged a knowing glance with Danny, more amused than angry, and muttered, "Some people never change."

* * *

Dan stared angrily over the desk at Agent Hunter, a man with a better than passing resemblance to Warden Walker. The alarm had started up again; coupled with the lifeless feeling of his host's body, it was all he could do not to reach over and snap the man's neck. "What do you mean, destroyed?" he demanded wearily, rubbing his forehead to ward off a headache. 

Hunter scoffed. Apparently, the President was little more than a figurehead and commanded no respect at all from the Guys in White. "Exactly what I said, sir," he replied with a mocking emphasis on the title. "One Class A and an unknown type got in during all the commotion. We assume the Class S was here as a diversion. All three seem to have escaped."

"Well, fix it," Dan snapped.

"With all due respect, sir," the human began with no respect at all. "I do know how to do my job." And without even waiting for a dismissal, Hunter about-faced and stalked from the room.

Alone again, Dan left the unconscious President to pace the room. Hunter would have made a much better host, but the President would likely call for help when he woke up. Dan wasn't ready to kill him just yet; it would lead to questions and confrontations that he wasn't ready for. The future's weaponry was highly advanced, designed to fight off a so-called "Class S" like himself with minimal effort. His plan would require cunning and patience, and although he had plenty of the former, he was rapidly running out of the latter.


	9. Chapter Eight

From the vantage of a mostly-collapsed roof, Danny stared in awe at the tableau beneath him. Apparently, it had been a long time since the ghosts had anything to celebrate. Ember hadn't changed at all; she and her band played songs he'd never heard and highly doubted that she wrote. Everyone danced around the makeshift stage; some he recognized, and some he didn't. Some had changed, and some had not.

The Box Ghost had become the person Danny met in his older self's future. He danced with someone who looked like a tough army cook; after a moment, the boy realized with a shock that it was the Lunch Lady. Their daughter, Box Lunch, had adopted the appearance of a teenager in military fatigues, though she still wore her signature pigtails. She clung to the arm of a young man who had to be Johnny 13 and Kitty's son.

His eyes shifted to see Desiree and Gypsy chatting like old friends and sitting on top of Ted the Alligator. By the creature's red eyes, the Ghost Master must have been in control. He idly wondered if the pair of fused souls had become stuck in that form. A few feet away, Kat was apparently trying to convince Skulker to dance. Danny raised an eyebrow at that and wondered when she had decided she liked him. It was kind of disturbing.

He picked out Freakshow and Lydia; neither had changed much, except that Freakshow was very clearly a ghost. And…was that Plasmius talking to Pointdexter? The ghost nerd hadn't changed, but Plasmius more closely resembled his human half. He raised a hand in greeting. Danny blinked and waved back. He glanced around a bit more, then realized that he was looking for Walker. The meeting with the GiW had put him in mind again, and Danny thought it was strange that the warden was nowhere to be found.

"It's been too long for them," said a quiet voice. Danny turned to see an elderly ghost who might still have been mistaken for a human if not for the obvious stab wound in the center of his chest. Noticing the direction of Danny's eyes, he brushed it idly. "They were trying to shut me up," he explained happily. "I will wear my scar with pride until the day I fade."

The boy couldn't help but smile in response. "You're Takamine," he ventured. "You designed the ghost shield?" He paused. "Three hundred years ago…wait a minute…"

Takamine laughed boisterously. "I believe Nick and his daughter had a small wager on how long it took you to notice. I'll have to tell them and find out who won." Danny wasn't sure whether to roll his eyes or ask for details. Fortunately, he was saved from having to decide. "So tell me: are you really Danny Phantom?"

He didn't quite look at Danny when he asked. He was hiding something. "Yeah…" the boy replied suspiciously.

"Now, see, that's impossible," the man informed him in a casual, good-natured tone. "See, I know what happened to Danny Phantom, unlike them. And he's…well, let's just say he's not available any more."

Danny narrowed his eyes. "What did you do?"

They stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity, each trying to take measure of the other's manners and intentions. At last, Takamine looked away. "It was the Guys in White. They were…astounded. Terrified. A ghost that bled human blood? Such a thing was unheard of. Still, it was obviously very much a ghost, and they had a very important person who was dying of a very rare disease. A disease, I might add, that could be cured through a little green pill, much like the kind they give to women trying to conceive."

"That was you?" the boy asked tentatively. "And the ghost was m-uh…Phantom?"

Takamine nodded. "Do you know what the Fentonian Process is? Life is contained in all things. Even ghosts. When a person dies, that energy…coagulates, I suppose. It becomes thicker based on the emotional intensity felt at the time of death. Sometimes, it's merely absorbed back into the atmosphere and recycled. Sort of like reincarnation, only without Nirvana at the end. Sometimes, it's strong enough to carry certain memories, and people remember their past lives. Sometimes, it's so strong that the person doesn't actually leave, and we get the varying kinds of ghosts."

He paused as though overcome by some emotion, though Danny couldn't tell what it might have been. "Ghosts aren't evil because they're ghosts," he continued quietly. "They're evil because the emotion that created them is usually hatred or anger. Sometimes, it's just pain. Very, very seldom, it's a focused mixture of the three, usually caused by some kind of betrayal. The spirit becomes…stuck on the desire for revenge to the point that it can think of nothing else."

"The Malice," Danny supplied.

Takamine blinked in surprise and turned to face him again. "You know it?" It was more a statement than a question, but the boy nodded anyway. "He knew it, too…better than most. I have his nightmares sometimes."

Danny had a vague idea of what had happened. Part of him wanted Takamine to continue; another part wanted to fly away as fast as he could. He remained frozen in place, held by some morbid curiosity.

"The Process mines ectoplasm from everything," Takamine said after a long silence. He had switched to a more scholarly tone, perhaps to combat the almost-depressed mood he had slipped into. As he continued, bitterness and anger crept into his tone, though he kept it to a minimum. "I've never seen an animal. The only plants left are genetically engineered…lifeless…_things_ that only a few people can afford. By taking the energy from humans, they prevented it from being recycled. Without it, things began to die. And the more they took to power their world and build their city, the less there was to go around. And the less there was…" He waved a hand that seemed to indicate the ruined city, the ghosts that populated it, and the reddened sky and empty fields beyond it. "There are less than three thousand humans left on this planet. These ghosts below are all that are left. Their realm, the Ghost Zone, is slowly being destroyed because humans found a way in."

Less than three thousand people…less than a hundred ghosts…"I get it now," Danny whispered. He shook his head and glanced at the scientist, who seemed to have gotten distracted from the original question. The subject was obviously a very personal one for him. "And Phantom?" he hesitated to ask.

Takamine seemed to rouse himself. He smiled faintly. "Sorry. I believe I mentioned that I was dying? People die very young, now. Few live past thirty. They've given it a name I can never remember, but it's simply the result of one's energy running out. I was nearing my time, but, as I also said, I was very important to them. They infused me with the energy mined from Phantom to prolong my life. However, the…odd nature of his being, possibly paired with the condition humans had put themselves in, conspired to ensure that I lived for a very, very long time." He chuckled mirthlessly and shook his head. "At least, that's the scientific explanation. Would you like to know what I really believe?"

Certain that he did not, Danny nodded anyway.

"He was punishing me. I think there was still consciousness left…"

The boy stared in something that was almost shock and almost horror at the man who refused again to meet his eyes. He finally managed to tear his gaze away and stared down at Plasmius, aloof as ever. The thought that he couldn't find Walker once again crossed his mind, and he decided not to ask. He didn't want to know if the agent was some twisted reincarnation of the warden. He didn't want to know any of it. It was on his tongue to ask why he was told, but a large shadow passed overhead, bringing with it an oppressive, unearthly chill. He shifted his gaze toward the movement, and then he was staring in horror for a completely different reason.

Valerie's description did not do the creature justice. Some part of his mind decided to wonder how the Heart of Thanatos had repaired itself. It went on to note that the green gas she mentioned was conspicuously absent. The rest of his mind wanted to curl up into a little ball and hide. The Wind of the Necropolis radiated fear like the sun did heat; even the full ghosts below became much subdued. Takamine shuddered and started to pick his way down to the ground, not yet confident in his ability to fly.

"Come on, boy," he said. "We'd best see what's what."

Danny stayed where he was long enough to notice that Pariah Dark sat astride the base of the dragon's neck, something that would have been very painful for a living creature considering the spikes that grew out of his spine. Necrowind roared and flapped his wings a few times before settling down to let his passenger dismount. Next to them, and almost completely unnoticed by the display, Fright Knight and his winged horse made a surprising pathetic figure. The boy shook himself out of his trance and dove for the ground.

"How truly sad a day it is, when the living fail to show their god the proper fear and respect," Necrowind boomed.

Plasmius scoffed and rolled his eyes. "I assume it went poorly?" he called, his tone full of mockery. "Funny, I seem to recall mentioning that you underestimated them."

Although the dragon's response was in ancient Greek, it hardly needed a translation. "I didn't even know the Greeks knew that word…" Skulker muttered, snickering.

Danny turned. "You understood that?"

"Automatic translation program."

The boy made a noise of understanding. "What were they doing?"

"Trying to find Clockwork," Skulker sighed. "We're getting desperate."

"It wasn't the mortals that gave us trouble," Pariah was saying as Danny turned his attention back. "The Master of Time is simply gone."

"His scent lingers," Necrowind announced. He looked oddly like a cat, sitting on his haunches with his tail curled around his talons. His wings twitched, as though he was trying not to mantle. Danny had seen a parrot in the pet store do that when it got nervous. "He has not been away for long," the creature continued. "Two days, at most."

If he didn't count traveling though time, hadn't Dan attacked two days before?

"Oh, no…" Danny groaned, earning a few curious stares. After some impatient prompting, he said, "I have to go back to Amity-I mean…the City of Glass. There's someone I need to find."

"If there's a ghost stuck in there," Skulker began. "Then he won't be much longer."

The boy let out a harsh breath and glanced at his feet. "You don't know him. Trust me; he's still there. I have to find him before he goes back in time and we lose him…"

"Back in time?" someone exclaimed. Suddenly, he was in the center of a mass of ghosts all talking at once. Alarmed, he cringed back against Skulker without realizing it. Someone yelled for order. When nothing happened, a shrill, animalistic scream cut through the air.

Anyone around to listen could have heard a pin drop.

"Much better," Pariah laughed, patting the edge of Necrowind's ribcage. The bone dragon seemed to grin smugly. "Now, what's this about traveling through time, child?"

Danny looked around. They seemed so desperate; their expressions were almost hungry in a way. "I may…know where to find…Clockwork…" he replied hesitantly. He expected another outburst, but the ghosts remained silent. They didn't even exchange glances, but merely continued to stare. It was almost a shock when Plasmius spoke.

"An all-out attack!" he announced, jumping to the podium to stand by Necrowind's claws. "We'll distract the Guys in White; you find Clockwork."

"That's insane!" someone yelled. "We'll never come back!"

"It doesn't matter!" Pointdexter called back. He fought his way through the crowd to stand by Danny. "If he makes it, then he can stop all of this from happening!"

"And if he doesn't?"

"Then it won't matter anyway," Fright Knight replied. "I agree; we should do this."

"Then it's settled!" Pariah decided before anyone else could object. "We'll attack at 9:42, when they change shifts. They'll be disoriented, then."

"4:53 would be better," Plasmius argued. "You know how lax the graveyard shift is…"

The discussion erupted again into times and terms that meant little to Danny. He glanced at Takamine, who stared back with an unreadable expression. Someone hissed next to his ear, and he jumped. "Come on," whispered the disembodied voice. He felt her tug on his arm and let her lead him away.

"Where are we going?" he asked the general area to his left.

Kat waited until they were out of the crowd to materialize and answer. "Just away." She paused to collect her thoughts and perhaps fight off her oh-so-useless emotions. "It's been a long time," she said at last.

Danny raised an eyebrow. "You waited this long to tell me you missed me?"

"I didn't think it was really you," she confessed. "Skulker thought so. Dad says he didn't care, but…when would he say anything else, right?"

"I thought you said I have a unique power signature," he teased, folding his arms.

Kat smiled sadly. "Like I said: it's been too long. And now, you're leaving again."

Danny looked at his feet. "I'm going to make sure this never happens," he began, but she cut him off.

"It doesn't matter. If you make it, this future is erased. If you don't, we'll all be Processed. Either way, we cease to exist. That doesn't bother me like it used to, but…" There was nothing of her egotism left, Danny realized. He wondered what had happened but was afraid to ask. "I never got to say goodbye, last time," she whispered. "That's all."

"Kat-"

"You were always like a brother to me," she interrupted. "Goodbye."

He took a breath to respond, but as he watched her walk away, only one thing came to mind. "You're not supposed to make me feel guilty for being mad at you."

There was a very long pause, then she started to laugh. "What did I do?" she asked. "No, wait. Don't tell me. The last thing you were mad at me for was the sharks, and I'd like to harbor the illusion that you don't remember that part."

Danny very nearly asked what she was talking about, then decided that he'd rather not know after all. "Harbor away," he said instead. Still laughing, Kat wandered off to locate her father.

She didn't realize he was from the past. Looking around, the boy realized that no one did, although Plasmius kept giving him strange looks. After a moment, he flew back to his previous vantage to wait. He was mildly surprised that no one tried to join him.

* * *

A/N: I have never seen YYH. Well, I tried to watch it, but I just wasn't interested after he came back to life. I'm not surprised they used that class system, though. It's pretty common. I actually got it from Final Fantasy 7. 


	10. Chapter Nine

The Ghost Zone was dying; the Observants were gone. He wondered at how bad things had become that even they could have faded even as he wondered who they were. It was all so very confusing. He stared at the glass that littered the floor from his shattered viewing globe.

He was Clockwork. He could control time. He could stop it all from happening, he realized. He could take Danny back in time and ensure that the humans never invented the Fentonian Process. It would be so easy.

A loud thump echoed across the stone of his castle, followed closely by the clopping of a horse's hooves. He became invisible and started to leave. No one was supposed to find him there; he remembered that much at least. Pariah Dark and Fright Knight wanted to change the past, and he couldn't-

But he wanted to change the past, too. It would have been the right thing to do. Clockwork froze in miserable indecision as what remained of Mallory argued with some deeper knowledge of what had to be.

"We'll split up!" Pariah Dark announced, crossing the fallen threshold. "Fright Knight, you'll go that way."

"Of course, my liege." The armored dragoon bowed his head and turned smartly to search in the indicated direction.

Without actually waiting for the knight's response, Pariah turned to Necrowind. "Dragon, you st-"

"You dare to order about your god?" the great beast roared. He mantled and pounded one talon against the floor, causing it to crumble further. "I am the Wind of the Necropolis! You will treat me with the proper respect, little worm!"

The Ghost King started to give a furious response, then changed his mind and sneered. "Ha! What kind of 'god' runs scared at the first sight of humans?"

Necrowind hissed and reared back on his haunches, perhaps to remind Pariah that he was an insignificant ant by comparison. "Your very existence depends on my good humor, ghost. Be on your way, and I will stand against those who follow."

What was it Plasmius had said? "As long as they're doing what you want, let them think it was their idea"? It was good advice, he knew. He decided not to remind the bone dragon that he wouldn't have fit inside anyway and stomped off.

A few moments passed. "Hello, Pluto."

"If you must, you know I prefer the Greek."

"It slipped my mind," Clockwork apologized. He repressed a shudder as a pair of bright yellow eyes fixed on his location.

"It isn't like you to forget details, Atropos," Necrowind rumbled in quiet suspicion.

"Clockwork," he corrected, uncertain where the other name came from. The dragon relaxed marginally, as though he had passed some test. He shook off his confusion and muttered, "They're looking for me, aren't they?"

"You don't know?"

Again, with that suspicion. "I was being rhetorical," he added quickly. Suddenly, he knew that he was about to be eaten. Necrowind's respect would only last as long as he thought the Master of Time was the stronger ghost. If he figured out that Clockwork was suffering from some kind of temporal amnesia… "They can't know that I'm here," he said on impulse. "Tell them I've been gone for two days."

The bone dragon seemed to purr. "As it wishes…" he replied, settling down to wait.

Clockwork hesitated a moment longer as a little voice inside begged him to change his mind and do what they wanted. But if he did that, Necrowind would know something was wrong instead of simply suspecting it.

He would change time for them. He had to. It was about responsibility, after all. That had to be why he existed.

So why didn't the realization make him feel any better?

* * *

Dan stared thoughtfully at the inert body by his feet. Why was he standing around and waiting for them to repair the machine? It would be three days, they had said when he demanded to know what was taking so long. He wasn't sure he could stand another three minutes overshadowing the President's lifeless body. So why wait? It was only three days; he felt perfectly confident that he could pinpoint three days in the future without landing in the void of space left after the Earth's destruction.

He lifted the window and flew up to the roof to ensure that he didn't end up in a room full of ghost hunters. A few minutes later, he opened his eyes on the bright blue sky and looked down at the empty fields beneath him. After a moment, he looked back up at the sky and groaned, "Why, me?"

It was very clearly the past. It was equally clear that it was well before Amity Park had been founded, even as a colonial outpost for people migrating west. At least, there were no dinosaurs. He flew off to look for civilization on the off chance that he had found a useful era.

"Electrical impulses…it's all just electrical…"

"Kat, are you okay?" Danny asked. She'd been murmuring the words like they were a holy mantra for several minutes. He wasn't used to such uncertainty from the gremlin, and it had started to make him nervous.

She sighed and nodded vaguely. "I don't like handling this stuff. There's something wrong with it."

"It's like wearing rotted flesh," Skulker agreed from Danny's other side.

Beyond him, Takamine leaned forward slightly to inform them all, "It is rotted. That's why it's grey."

"It is an abomination to me!" Necrowind declared. "The mortal worms have blasphemed against me, and for that, they must be punished!" A few of the braver souls snickered quietly.

Danny started to glance around, then quickly shifted his gaze forward again. Really, he'd been avoiding Plasmius. He didn't want to know how their rivalry had finally ended, especially since he couldn't find his parents anywhere. He wanted to make up some excuse and run away, but he held his ground and tried to pretend that he hadn't seen his mortal enemy drifting through the crowd.

"It's almost time," the older ghost whispered to Kat. She nodded absently and vanished, most likely to begin work on the shield. Plasmius didn't leave, but he didn't say anything, either. The two pretended not to notice each for a long time. Finally, however, he asked, "You didn't just forget the past few centuries, did you?"

Danny had already figured out that Plasmius probably knew, but the wording of the question threw him off, as was doubtless the man's intent. "I have no idea what you're talking about," seemed the safest way to reply. Plasmius chuckled, but did not pursue the subject.

For what seemed like an eternity, the only sound was the nervous muttering of ghosts. A harsh, reptilian hide brushed his leg, but the Ghost Master had nothing to say. He seemed to have lost the ability to speak with his other form. The shield flickered slightly, and Technus took the cue to rush inside and sabotage the alarm. Someone reminded everyone to make as much as noise and do as much damage as possible. The shield collapsed.

"Go, my disciples!" Necrowind roared, launching himself and Pariah into the sky.

It was like prodding an anthill with a stick. The Guys in White swarmed out of the nearest towers, considerably less disoriented than was hoped. There were also considerably fewer than expected, and Danny felt confident that the ghosts could handle themselves. He weaved between errant attacks as he passed the battle and cringed at Necrowind's fear-inducing shriek.

In the heart of the city, the streets were empty. He idly wondered if there was some kind of curfew. The view, breathtaking when he first arrived, had become a revolting blight once he learned its history. He sped up, eager to find Dan and Clockwork so they could leave. It suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea what he would do when he found Dan…

"Danny!"

He quickly slid to a halt and looked around; apparently, Clockwork had decided to move, not that Danny could blame him.

"Your older self has shifted through time again," Clockwork said before the boy could greet him. Oddly, he almost sounded breathless, as though he'd been rushing around. Danny immediately put the thought from his head.

"We have to go, then!" he exclaimed. "Can you find him?"

An expression of concern flitted across Clockwork's features; it was quickly repressed with a decisive nod. Danny was about to ask if something was wrong, but he was given no chance as the time portal appeared around them and dropped them into a huge garden of white marble and colorful flowers. It was after midnight, just as it had been when they left the future.

Danny was slowly coming to a realization. Dan had arrived at his home in late afternoon. After the fight, he had awakened the next morning sometime in 1775. By that evening, he was battling ghost raptors in the Cretaceous Period. Clockwork had taken him directly to midmorning the next day, where he had spent a few hours in GiW custody, then a few more hours waiting. It had been two days for him. Apparently, it had been two days for the future, as well, since Clockwork disappeared.

What it all meant, he didn't know. He resolved to ask as soon as Clockwork was being Clockwork again and turned his attention back to his surroundings. "Um, when did Amity Park look like Rome?" he asked in confusion.

"Greece, actually," Clockwork corrected him absently. "I've moved us through space as well as time. I'm not sure if your older self is actually here yet, but he should be soon."

Danny nodded, then grinned. "Well, good. I could use a break, anyway."

There was a long silence that made him once again wonder if something was wrong. Clockwork seemed to shake himself out of some thought process and managed a weak smile of his own. "Indeed," he said simply. He shifted to his middle-aged form then, and the boy realized that it wasn't simply being in his ancient form that had the Master of Time leaning so heavily on his staff.

As they found a shadowed alcove to rest in, Danny bit off the desire to ask if everything was okay. Suddenly, he had a very bad feeling, and wanted nothing more than to delude himself into thinking it was just his nerves.

"Do you know who Thanatos was?" the ghost asked, seemingly at random. At Danny's headshake, he explained. "He was the embodiment of death; it's personification if you will. He was known by many names throughout history, though Grim Reaper is the most well known, I believe."

"Okay…" Danny replied, uncertainly. The bad feeling started to get worse.

"Most of the old gods were simply powerful ghosts, actually," Clockwork continued. "Thanatos and Mors; Hades and Pluto; even Cerberus and Charon…they were all the same entity."

And suddenly, it clicked. "Necrowind." Danny made a noise that was part sigh and part groan.

Clockwork nodded. "I saw him today in the Ghost Zone, and I'm trying to remember now. There was something important….something about being here…"

He seemed so dejected that Danny couldn't help but lay a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry about it. You'll figure it out."

He pretended not to hear his companion whisper, "I hope you're right."

* * *

A/N: Sorry this one took so long. I forgot to pay the cable bill, and they confiscated the internet. _/sheepish grin/_


	11. Chapter Ten

Cassius Livius was a weasel of a man. He looked at the world through a pair of beady, black eyes that reminded most people of a rat. There were speculations that the escaped slave had killed his master during a burglary, but most people didn't bother to care. The thieves had been dealt with, and no one had liked the weak-minded politician anyway. Most simply kicked Cassius aside when they saw him begging on the street corners.

A silent observer watched from the shadows of early morning's gloom as Cassius raced out of someone else's house. He ran hunched over, as though clutching something to his chest, and barely looked around to make sure he wasn't followed. It was a rather useless gesture when the one following him could become invisible at will. Dan smirked. That was just the event he'd been looking for.

He had spent the decade between his creation and imprisonment trying to find a force powerful enough to break through Amity Park's ghost shield. It was with some measure of surprise that, on raiding the Ghost Writer's library, he found a history on Pariah Dark. At the time, it had been nothing more than a fascinating look at one of his strongest foes. Pariah was the only ghost who had come close to defeating him, and he thought the knowledge would give him an edge. It didn't work; he'd been forced to join forces with the rest of the Ghost Zone once again just to seal the Ghost King away. He'd grown considerably stronger since then, but decided against a third battle. It simply wouldn't do to lose.

Cassius slowed down near the city walls and tried to act natural as he slipped through the gate. He was clearly a regular fixture since the guards barely spared him a glance. The flora outside the city reminded Dan of his brief stint in the prehistoric era, but he was too focused on the scuttling beggar _cum_ thief to give it more than a passing glance. It was impatient work to follow Cassius through the fields and past the livestock pens…

Dan froze, bemused. Somehow, he always thought the Romans raised cattle and sheep and whatever else they had raised. Not giant lizards. He had to snicker at the realization that he had changed time, though he couldn't help but wonder how the death of a single creature had affected the past so drastically. Maybe something else had happened. He put it out of mind and flew after his prey.

At last, with another glance around for spies, Cassius wedged himself between two rocks, muttering. Although his words were in a foreign language, his expression was of the purest disgust. He finally wiggled his way through the crevice and down into the cave below, cursing as he turned his foot on the skeleton of a small child. Dan idly wondered if it was a natural death until he saw all the others. He was about to dismiss their presence when he realized why they were there. While it was possible they had simply been using the cave as a playground, Cassius had used them as sacrifices.

One had to admire the man's passion and enthusiasm.

Cassius began to speak, or to chant, and Dan drifted forward to watch. He had pulled a tattered black robe over his rags. All the other preliminaries had been completed, probably for some time. The required circle of protection looked like it was made of dried blood. Dan wasn't impressed, especially when the chanting stopped, and nothing happened. He was confused, however. According to Ghost Writer's book, Cassius succeeded. Of course, according to that book, he was also a powerful necromancer who based himself in a darkened crypt.

Then a second voice began to speak. Suddenly, Dan was interested again, and he cursed his inability to understand what was being said.

* * *

Cassius took a breath to center himself and force down the vicious excitement. "I have summoned you!" he announced in answer to the Heart's demand. 

The Heart floated off of the crude pedestal he had made for it. It seemed to pull the torchlight out of the very air until it was obscured by the image of a heavily armored man with a pair of skeletal wings that rattled on his back. He strode arrogantly up to the edge of the circle and asked, as though addressing no one, "Does it doubt my eyes? Perhaps it thinks me blind…"

He seemed to radiate fear, but Cassius took smug comfort in the knowledge that his protective circle was perfectly made. "Perhaps it thinks me a fool!" he announced, not so subtly mocking his prisoner. "I know that you and the Greek's Thanatos are one and the same, Lord Mors. I know the tales of Sisyphus, and I know that as long as you are here, no one may die."

There was a flash of anger in Mors' glowing yellow eyes, quickly replaced by surprise, and then humor. When Cassius finished speaking, he actually began to laugh. "Would that you would test that theory in my sight; I could use the diversion. Sisyphus was of endless amusement to me, but all souls return to me in time. Now, what boon does the mortal worm demand of his god?"

It was a not so subtle admonition, but Cassius didn't care. He grinned. "Power."

He expected Mors to be less than pleased. He did not expect the personification of death to roll his eyes and sigh in long-suffering bemusement. "Indeed? Allow me. You desire the power to be feared, to exact your vengeance on those who have wronged you. You desire to laugh as they cower at your feet, begging for forgiveness and mercy. You humans are so predictable."

"Yes, just so!" Cassius exclaimed, choosing to ignore the last remark. "And as my slave, you must give it to me."

The being's human form vanished to be replaced by that of a skeletal dragon, far too large to have fit inside the tiny cavern. He didn't seem to notice as most of his body disappeared into the walls, but crouched down like a cat would before it pounced. Cassius took several frantic steps away as he realized that his circle of protection was completely worthless. He knew he had made it correctly.

Hadn't he?

"A slave, am I?" the dragon all but purred. Oddly, he didn't seem at all angry as he said casually, "I am your god, little worm. Your existence depends on my good humor. But you have amused me, and for that, I will give you what you seek."

Cassius suddenly realized that he was about to die. There was just something about the look in the dragon's eyes and the way that green energy played about its mouth that told him his life was getting ready to end. He snatched up a nearby candlestick; it was a weapon, at least, if not a very effective one. He jabbed at the dragon as it lunged forward, and the massive jaws closed mere inches away. Then again. And again…

The dragon was toying with him. He tossed the make-shift weapon away and balled his hands into fists, as though that would be more effective. "Come on, then, dragon!" he yelled defiantly. The look of vicious pleasure in the creature's eyes chilled him to the bone, but as it lunged one last time, he charged forward to meet it.

Everything became very confusing then. Something interposed itself between Cassius and the dragon, and he could only assume it was Hades himself. He decided to take the unexpected respite to run for his life.

* * *

Dan was unsure whether to be interested or annoyed. He knew the Heart couldn't be destroyed: even if it were shattered and scattered to the winds, the pieces would find each other again. He had toyed with the notion of locking it away somewhere, but that seemed like too much work. Besides, he might need it on hand later. To that end, he had decided to simply destroy Pariah Dark the second he appeared. 

Pariah had not appeared. Granted, the being looked like Pariah, but the presence of those wings was all wrong. Unsure what exactly had happened, Dan decided to err on the side of caution and just wait. His patience and suspicions were finally rewarded when the summoned ghost had revealed itself to be Necrowind.

Dan had seen pictures of the bone dragon, and they did not do the creature justice. The Medieval Ghost Zone had contained the most extensive library he'd found on the subject: a single book, which alluded to the possibility that dragon ghost siblings were descendents of the great beast. Before sending them both to the void, he had managed to discover that Aragon only cared when it could impress, and Dora thought it was rubbish.

So he was confused. Were Pariah Dark and Wind of the Necropolis one and the same? Or…

"Oh, who cares?" he muttered. Either Necrowind was Pariah, he created Pariah, or he turned Cassius into Pariah. Whatever was supposed to happen, getting Cassius out of the way was probably the first step. Dan grinned maliciously and threw himself into the fray.

Neither combatant paid much attention as Cassius ran to escape. Necrowind roared his fury at the ghost ray that struck his eyes and demanded something. Dan shrugged and blasted him again. "Just ensuring my future," he informed the beast, knowing that it didn't understand. He dodged the snapping jaw and swiping talons for a few more minutes, trying to find his own opening for escape. He had just considered letting the time medallion send him wherever it would when a bony tail appeared out of nowhere and slammed into him from behind. He hit the ground hard and found himself trapped in one great claw almost before his head cleared.

Necrowind murmured something that sounded like a question. Suddenly, pain like he had not experienced since both his halves were ripped from their respective hosts lanced through Dan's head, leaving an afterimage of two yellow eyes imprinted on his vision. "Now this one…it intrigues me…"

Dan spared the barest fraction of a second to realize that he understood that before he started to struggle. "Let go of me, or-"

"Or what?" Necrowind laughed. "Foolish worm, I am your god."

"You're a ghost, just like me," Dan scoffed. He didn't expect to be subsequently thrown against the ground, but decided not to complain as it meant he was free again. Necrowind reared back, and he insolently wondered if the dragon's upper body had broken through into open air. Then the dragon crashed back down, his teeth snapped closed centimeters from Dan's nose, and not moving seemed like the best plan he'd had all day.

"I am Death," Necrowind whispered. "I am…" He seemed to search for a moment, perhaps for the accepted translation of his name. "…the Breath of the Underworld. The Wind of the Necropolis. The Grim Reaper. So many names you have for the same concept, and that is me. A ghost I may be, but revered as a god, and you will respect me as such."

Dan briefly considered pretending to submit, then wondered if fighting back was a wise option. The two ideas went by in barely a moment's time, and the thoughtless reaction of an insolent smirk won out. "I'll respect you if I feel like it."

The creature seemed confused, uncertain. Not worried as such, but perplexed. As though Dan was a fun puzzle that had just become endlessly fascinating. After what felt like an eternity, he chuckled and shifted back into a feline lounge. "Think it that I do not see Fate's mark within it? It blazes forth like a beacon, calling to me."

Dan wasn't sure about that; if whatever Fate's mark was actually "blazed like a beacon", Necrowind wouldn't have been as surprised to see him. He was just about to ask when a half-forgotten college course flitted through his head: the maiden, Clotho the Spinner; the mother, Lachesis the Allotter; and the crone, Atropos the Inevitable. He couldn't resist a grin at the realization that "Fate" was represented by three female spirits. "Clockwork didn't send me, if that's what you're asking. I stole this medallion."

Necrowind snorted derisively. "An impressive feat, I'm sure, as he has been missing for nigh on three days. Still…as you are considerably more interesting than foolish mortal worms, I will put to you the same question. What boon do you ask of your god?"

"I don't need anything from you," Dan sneered. "Just stay out of my way." He became intangible and flew back through the roof of the cave to find, and possibly kill Cassius. It wouldn't do to let the would-be necromancer try again after all.

Down below, Necrowind blinked slowly and twitched his incorporeal tail in satisfaction.

* * *

A/N: Gah! I'm sorry! 

Oh, yes. I thought it might be interesting to note that Cassius means 'empty, vain', and Livius means 'envy'. Mallory, as I believe I mentioned in-story, means 'ill-fated'. (And was a perfectly acceptable male name back in that time. Indeed, I believe giving the name to ones daughter would have been quite odd.)

Also, I've noticed that spaces keep vanishing between words. That is totally not my fault. As soon as I fix them all and save the chapter, more crop up. I can only assume it's this site's doing.


	12. Chapter Eleven

Flying slowly, Dan stared down at the world without seeing it and ticked items off on his fingers. He had dealt with Clockwork and his meddlesome younger self in one fell swoop. His strongest enemy had been mercilessly killed before he could become Pariah Dark. That was three, he thought. It was so much easier to dispose of enemies before they became enemies. He wanted to move a few centuries into the future, but he was under no illusions that his presence in ancient Rome was anything other than chance.

Although, it was rather convenient that he landed in the exact moment of time that he wanted. Perhaps he had finally figured it out? He stopped to hover while he concentrated. He didn't remember doing anything differently.

No, it was best not to try. At least, not yet. He resumed his flight toward Greece, intending to find out if any other gods were really just ghosts in disguise. If the myths actually held a grain of truth, he would find them on Mount Olympus. Somehow, the thought of taking Zeus' place as King of the Gods was a very sweet one. He could wait to reach the future.

Suddenly, it was like a door of light opened in the air before him. He tried to stop; he was flying very quickly, but he thought he should have had no trouble dropping his momentum. Yet somehow, he found himself on the other side, staring at a room full of mirrors. He whirled around, but the door had vanished.

"Who's there?" he demanded, certain that the place was empty. It wasn't that big, and there was nowhere to hide. Movement caught his attention, and he turned to see that one of his reflections had shifted, crossed its arms, and was looking back with a smugly amused expression.

"We are," it replied, sweeping a hand at its fellows. Dan followed the direction of its gesture and realized that none of the reflections were exact replicas. There was one all in black; there was one that chilled even his heart; that one there was far too human…

"Who are you?" Dan asked, pulling his eyes back to the original speaker.

Perversely, a different one said, "We are the Guardians of Space. And we have a proposition for you."

Dan glared around, but he couldn't figure out which one had spoken. He gave up trying and simply picked one at random. "And why should I care? You don't mean anything to me."

"Perhaps," the Guardian agreed, inclining his head. "But they do."

The mirror shimmered and darkened slightly, then cleared to look out over a small courtyard. As though he was watching a movie, the "camera" zoomed in on an even smaller niche containing a statue of some goddess or other and…

"No!" he exclaimed. "I killed him!"

"Exactly."

"Then why isn't he violent?"

Dan suddenly had the impression that someone was snickering behind him, but there was no telling which one it was. "Because he's Clockwork," a Guardian explained, as though speaking to a very small child. "He exists outside of time. He doesn't follow the same rules as mere mortals."

He'd been in such a good mood just a few minutes ago, but it had quickly evaporated. Dan was tired of the so-called Guardians of Space, tired of their laughter, angry at Clockwork for not just dying like a normal person…he fired an ectoplasmic energy blast at the mirror, unconsciously shielding his face as it shattered into so much glass. He wasn't sure what he expected to see behind it; a darkened void perhaps? But it was simply a wall made of brick and mortar like any other. He smirked at the remaining Guardians' expressions. They were surprised, astonished even; clearly, they didn't expect that.

"Now," Dan began. "Let's try this again. What can _you_ do for _me_?"

The Guardians exchanged glances, a long and patience-trying process. Dan was just about to speed things up in his own, special way when they nodded decisively. "I think I can help you," one said. "I think I know exactly what you want." It stepped through the glass.

* * *

Danny opened bleary eyes and marveled for a moment that he had actually fallen asleep. He stared uncomprehendingly at his worried companion for a moment longer before the expression registered. "What's wrong?" he demanded, sitting upright. 

"I'm not sure," Clockwork replied. He turned away as though looking for something. "You're older self should have been here by now. Something's happened that I didn't…"

"You didn't see it coming?" Danny offered when it became apparent that Clockwork was not going to finish his sentence.

Clockwork didn't answer, didn't even turn to meet his eyes. Finally, however, he said, "We need to leave." Without another word, or even a glance in Danny's direction, he opened a portal and pulled them both through.

Almost immediately, Danny felt as though something grabbed him from behind. He tried to turn and fight, but he couldn't move. He tried to call out, but his voice was smothered, inaudible. There was an almost blinding flash of light, and he was staring at himself.

He recognized the room and dropped into a battle stance, but the few clones he could see copied him as perfectly as any normal reflection. Staring around, he realized the mirrors were empty of their usual occupants. "Where are you?" he called softly, unsure he wanted an answer.

"They're gone," a voice replied.

Danny whirled around, wondering why Clockwork had brought him there. Did the Master of Time even remember the Guardians existed? Then he saw that "Clockwork" was on the wrong side of the glass. "What do you want?" he demanded. "Where's Clockwork? And why do you look like that?"

The Guardian smirked, an expression both mischievous and malicious, and shrugged. "I brought you here to confess. And frankly, under the circumstances, I thought it would be best to approach you without my usual glamour."

Danny blinked; the Guardian said, "I". The Guardians never said "I"; only "we". He had accidentally found his way to their mirrored room quite a few times when escaping enemies or just exploring the Ghost Zone. They had only interfered twice, but they seemed enjoy talking to him (or about him, over his head) while he was there, often forcing him to stay for fifteen or twenty minutes before letting him find the exit. And in all that time, they never referred to themselves as individuals. It was enough to throw him off balance.

He nodded slowly, cautiously. "Okay…"

"You know we're opportunists, Danny. We've been watching you chase your older self around. It was good entertainment for a while; then it got boring." The Guardian paused to look expectantly at his listener, but the boy only folded his arms and glared. With a quiet chuckle, he continued. "So we brought him here."

"Why?" Danny burst out.

"Because we know something you don't," the Guardian answered, not at all peeved by the interruption. "We underestimated him, however. He's holding my colleagues hostage. I, alone, escaped to seek your help."

Danny shook his head. For a creature that spent millennia playing games with mortal lives, the Guardian was remarkably transparent. He was lying. He was obviously lying. When the boy voiced his insight, however, the image simply grinned and pointed. Danny followed the direction of his finger to see a thin section of brick wall. He had noticed it, for just a moment before he realized where he was, but he had not really seen it. The shattered glass had been swept into a pile beneath it; any jagged edges left in the frame had been pulled free.

"Clockwork made these mirrors. He was the only one who could destroy them. Of course, he's not here right now, is he?"

Danny's eyes widened as he realized that the voice had come closer. He whirled around and had just enough time to see someone standing behind him before the Guardian, his voice filled with relish and something that may have been relief, called, "Time out!"

The boy blinked to clear his eyes, surprised by the sudden scene change, then gasped. He looked around slowly at some stone ruins, covered in vegetation and surrounded by some massive jungle. There was no one around: human, animal, or paranormal.

And he was alone.

* * *

It was all wrong. Clockwork knew he had made things worse. He thought Danny was mistaken; surely, the boy didn't mean to lie. He truly believed Clockwork was the one who could help. 

Clockwork sighed; he should have known better. He had knowledge of the future; how could he not have seen what a mess he would cause? He had lost Danny somewhere, and he didn't know where. There was only one thing to do, one way to fix everything. He obviously wasn't supposed to be a time-controlling ghost, so he obviously wasn't supposed to have even died. He stared down at the mob standing outside his…Mallory's shop.

Movement caught his eye, and his proverbial heart twisted painfully in his chest. It was Emily, overshadowed by Dan and invisible to the human eye, ducking through the wall to "betray" him. He could save her, and he could save himself. He dove for the ground and through the roof just in time to see the possessed girl raise a clock-topped staff over her head. Steeling his nerves, he flew through her, caught Dan, and kept going through the far wall.

Dan hissed something that he didn't hear, there was a moment of blinding double vision, and then the world went dark.

* * *

"See?" casually remarked the Guardian. "I told you he would do it himself. I don't look like him for the aesthetics, you know." 

Dan ignored the insolence and simply watched as the other version of himself vanished. His sight dimmed, and for just a moment, he thought he could see another time and place. Then the moment was over, and he shook the fuzz from his head. "Well, good," he scoffed. "Now, about Mount Olympus…"

* * *

Danny gasped and staggered as his vision dimmed. For an unnerving moment, he thought he was somewhere that looked suspiciously like Vlad's mansion. As his head cleared, he noticed the Guardian had left one of Clockwork's time medallions around his neck. He briefly toyed with the idea of taking it off, but he had no idea where he would end up. Best to leave it on, he thought as he moved to explore the ruins.

* * *

A/N: It's a miracle! I apologize for not having proofread this yet; I'm just too dang excited to have finished it. You don't want to know how many time I've rewritten this thing. I guess my subconscious was getting fed up with my block because I had a dream last night that lit my passion again. After all this time, I got this chapter out to my satisfaction in less that an hour. I am both pleased and embarrassed. 

Anyway, I apologize again for the time. I don't know how many of you dropped by profile lately, but I'll be deleting the message there in about a week if you'd like to go read my first apology. I'll also be reposting this chapter in a few days, after I proofread it, so if you notice any words missing or things that I failed to explain properly, don't hesitate to let me know. It's meant to be a little confusing to convey what the characters are feeling, but if you think it's too much, I need to know.

Oh, it's so good to be back...


	13. Chapter Twelve

They were idiots. Looking back, he shouldn't have been surprised. The stories humans told should have been his biggest clue. He'd been human once; everyone knew the stories. At least, everyone knew enough of the stories to know that the ancient Greek gods were idiots.

The naked girl with the bow and arrows might have been worth keeping around, though.

The ghosts were ranged about in a loose circle around him, standing or lounging on pillows and furniture. Zeus was draped over the arms of his divan as though he had simply melted there. A woman Dan assumed was Hera stood disapprovingly nearby. On Zeus' other side, Necrowind-as-Hades wore his winged Pariah Dark form and an expression that alternated between hatefulness and vicious delight, depending on whom he happened to be facing.

Dan glared at the bone dragon, then glared at Zeus, and then, just for good measure, glared at the Guardian of Space. "What are they saying?" he demanded, sick and tired of being unable to understand.

The Guardian shrugged. "They're laughing at you."

"Oh, they are?" Dan asked, narrowing his eyes.

"I want to see them fall just as much as you do, let me assure you. Just trust me for a few moments longer." He turned away and started to resume his argument.

Necrowind gave a loud snort and a dismissive wave. "Politics!" he said as though testing the word. "It's all politics. Atropos…"

No one paid attention as the Guardian grumbled, "Clockwork."

"…makes his claim; Zeus refutes. Much laughter is had by all that one such as you could possibly challenge the King of the Gods." Incomprehensible demands for a translation went ignored. "There are rules to follow, you see, little worm. An official challenge must be made and accepted, ceremonies to be enacted, particulars to be observed." The demands grew louder; the Guardian buried his head in one hand, but otherwise didn't respond. "My human should have been standing there. I would have devoured it and remade it in my image had you not interfered-"

He broke off with a snarl of rage as Zeus finally sat up to smack him across the arm and repeat his demand, but Dan was finished listening, anyway. The Guardian had told him it was imperative that he be patient. If some idiotic ritual was all he was waiting for, then he was done waiting.

* * *

"Okay," Danny whispered, glancing around furtively. A monkey returned his gaze with a curious head bob; obviously some traces of the mammalian evolution remained. He'd been worried that even humans had become reptilian.

"I'm stuck inside a spooky temple." Technically, he wasn't stuck inside, but it was considerably less nerve-racking to deal with the quiet and the potential ghosts than to listen to the jungle outside and stare at the alien plant life. He felt disturbingly as though he had been sent to another world.

"I don't know where Clockwork is." That was true enough, but it reminded him of a theory he wasn't sure he wanted to accept. If there were infinite possibilities, why shouldn't there be infinite versions of Clockwork? And by the same token, why shouldn't some of those versions be troublesome meddlers who were more interested in their own entertainment than preserving the timeline. It made too much sense, when one considered their array of powers, to dismiss out of hand. While they had never before displayed the ability to manipulate time, they shared Clockwork's ability to access alternate realities. Perhaps those mirrors had sealed some of their powers away?

"I don't know where I am." He did know, however, that the temple walls were inscribed in English. Considering its apparent age, that bothered him a great deal. They spoke of a dead god who brought destruction down on their people despite their efforts to appease him. Faded murals showed huge, bowl-shaped braziers into which disturbingly human figures were thrown. The text beneath spoke of the sacrifices and suicides that ultimately did nothing. The god refused even to provide a reason for his displeasure. It ended with a note that survivors had painted the memorial as a warning. Based on the dried red stains and human skeletons that littered the floor, their god had waited just long enough for them to finish before taking them as well. There were no images of him, but Danny had a fair idea who it was.

"I don't even know when I am." The English confused him, but he supposed Dan could have decreed it to be the holy language or something. Forcing everyone else to learn English would have been easier than trying to learn Greek. Of course, since no one else knew English, Dan would have to have taught them; Danny didn't think his older self had that kind of patience. At any rate, the temple had been around long enough to appear centuries old to his untrained eye. He was probably not still in Ancient Greece.

Having run out of points to tick off on his fingers, he sighed and slid down the wall to sit on the floor. "I've got to get out of here."

"…telling you…here…" someone said. The voice was faint, as though from a distance. Danny became invisible, slid the time medallion down the inside of his shirt for safekeeping, and crept back down the hall.

"Who would?" Danny thought he heard a second voice say. Straining his ears, he could just make out, "…no one stupid enough…sacred ground ever since…" Having convinced himself that he was not hallucinating, Danny nodded once and flew out of the temple.

"Well, almost no one," the first speaker said idly.

Later, Danny would be grateful for his invisibility as he gaped openly at the sight of Jack Fenton sticking his tongue out childishly at a smirking Vlad Masters while Maddie, whatever her last name happened to be, rolled her eyes. All three were dressed in a kind of leather that resembled lizard-hide and carrying packs filled with what passed for the height of technology, if knowledge of his parents was still a valid indicator. They almost reminded him of the fictional archeologists or explorers on television.

"Please," he whispered, staring wide-eyed at the ancient temple. "This can't be Amity Park."

"Hey, you wanted to go first, Vladdy!" Jack was boisterously announcing.

Vlad folded his arms and sniffed. It took several seconds before Danny realized it was all just friendly teasing. "Yes, but I-" He broke off suddenly and narrowed his eyes, looking around.

"Did you hear it again?" Maddie asked quietly. She drew closer to Jack, though whether it was for protection or to protect him was not immediately clear. Vlad nodded vaguely and vanished.

Immediately, Danny's ghost sense went off, and he jumped to attention. The accident had still happened? Even with all the changes? Danny shook his head; perhaps things weren't quite as different as he thought. Questions swam around in his head as he looked frantically for Vlad. He tried to be ready for anything, but the older half ghost was still his superior in power. Plasmius reappeared just out of arm's reached, leaving Danny without enough warning to properly get out of the way of an ectoplasmic energy blast. He hit the ground, and before he could react, found himself dangling inches from Vlad's nose by the front of his hazmat uniform.

"It's not the one that's been following us," Vlad said, lip curled in disgust.

"Let me go!" Danny exclaimed, struggling. "I'm not your enemy." Inwardly, he marveled at being able to say that to Vlad Plasmius, but he quickly brought his mind back to the important issue.

Maddie gave a mockingly curious hum. "Really? Then why were you spying on us."

"I wasn't," he explained, attempting to twist around to see her. "I heard you out here from inside and came to see who it was. That's all." The three adults exchanged glances; as if by some unspoken command, Vlad shrugged and dropped Danny, then folded his arms. They seemed to expect him to flee, and Jack, at least, was obviously surprised when he remained.

The Guardian had left him there for a reason, he was sure. They never did anything without a purpose. On the off chance that he might figure out what the reason was so he could resume searching for his evil older self, he decided to keep talking. "I'm lost. I was…trying to find somebody, but somebody else brought me here and just left me." Then, quieter, "I don't know even what year it is…"

"What's a 'year'?" Jack piped up.

Danny blinked and looked around for help that was not forthcoming. "Uh, never mind. Do you guys know what this place is?"

There was a long pause as they traded glances again and seemed to choose Maddie as their spokesperson. "It's a temple to the gods," she informed him, placing a hateful emphasis on the word "gods". Defiantly, it seemed, she went on. "Not that we believe in gods. You're all just ghosts who take advantage of innocent people."

"Careful, Maddie," Jack warned quietly, but she merely scoffed.

"Vlad's here if he tries anything."

Danny stared uncomprehendingly for a moment; he turned to see Vlad glaring down at him, then turned back to Maddie. "You…think…I'm a god?" She merely glowered in response, though a touch of uncertainty crept into her eyes.

"You mean you don't?" Vlad asked thoughtfully.

"No!" Danny exclaimed vehemently. "I'm a ghost! There's no…I mean, I don't know if gods exist or not, but I've never seen one." _Except Necrowind_, he added mentally. _But he's a ghost, too, so he doesn't count._

The adults traded glances one last time, and Vlad finally reverted to his human form. "We know," he said. "We found your…Ghost Zone. That's what did this to me." He made a fist that blazed with energy just for emphasis.

"You built a Ghost Portal?" Danny breathed, hardly daring to hope.

"Sure did!" Jack announced happily. "Punched right through reality and found another dimension! Of course, they confiscated it, after that, and labeled us three heretics. Tried to burn poor Vladdy at the stake. Heh, like that would work..." He trailed off and grinned apologetically at the twin glares.

"We've been hunting through these old temples ever since," Maddie finished with a sigh. "They destroyed our prototype, but we think if we can just build a new one, we can find a way to turn Vlad back. But first, we need a new power source."

"Now, why are you so interested?" Vlad asked suspiciously.

A flock of butterflies descended in Danny's stomach at what he was about to do, but he knew he needed to. It wasn't as though plenty of people didn't already know, but they had found out on their own for the most part. Besides, none of them were his parents. "I'm half ghost," he confessed, changing back to his human form. "Like you."

* * *

A/N: And, I'm stuck. Horribly stuck. This isn't even writer's block. I don't know what it is. I had a plan, and had the next chapter written out, but it didn't work. It was horribly boring. So I scrapped it, and now I'm suck. I turn to you all. What do you think will happen? What do you think should happen? What do you want to see happen? Hopefully, someone's suggestion will jog my brain and I can figure out what to do next. 


	14. Chapter Thirteen

Gasp! Calliope! You're back! huggles muse ...I mean pays appropriate tribute and respect to muse

I've actually had most of this chapter done for ages. It was meant to be a cliffnotes explanation, but looks like it'll make a decent recap, too. I've got one other chapter done, which will be up tomorrow unless I get too excited, and part of a third. After that, who knows. I'm just taking advantage of this while it lasts. So don't get too excited and start thinking I'm back. That said...

* * *

"Okay," Danny sighed, tired of fending off questions. "Here's the story. But it's a long one, so don't say I didn't warn you.

"My parents built a Ghost Portal, but they couldn't get it to work. One of my friends talked me into going inside, and I guess I pushed a button because it suddenly came on and blasted me. That's how I became half ghost. But it opened up into the Ghost Zone, and all the ghosts started coming through. I decided to use my powers to send them all back, and that's how I met V-uh…um…a really bad guy who's also half ghost.

"There's a really long, complicated story that I can't really explain well because I don't get it myself. Basically, I wound up being forced to live with him, and he separated me from my ghost half. Then my ghost half separated his ghost half, and they merged into this even worse full ghost that we all just sort of call Dan. He never really introduced himself.

"Anyway, before all that actually happened, I got sent ten years forward in time to meet him. Actually, it might have been an accident, but I think Clockwork was expecting it. Clockwork is this ghost who can control time, by the way. So while I was in the future, I saw all these horrible things he did, and I kind of felt responsible because it was mostly my fault because I was going to cheat on this test. Yeah, like I said: long and complicated. I finally managed to get back thanks to the other bad guy because he wanted to prevent that future. And then I went and stopped my older self…Dan, and trapped him in the Fent-er…this ghost catching device that I usually keep on me at all times. I don't have one right now because…well, I'll get there.

"So the future was saved, and Dan was trapped, and I thought everything was over and fine. Except then he suddenly came back. I don't know how he got free; he just suddenly showed up in my kitchen with Clockwork's time-controlling staff. Next thing I know, I'm up on the roof, and Mom and Dad and Jazz and Sam and Tucker were all up there. Time was frozen, but I could still move because he put one of these medallions on me. It's not this one, but it was one just like it. He tried to overshadow me and make me kill everybody, but I forced him out. We fought for a while, and somehow Clockwork's staff got broken. I don't remember what happened because he…Dan, I mean…beat me up pretty good. All I know is I woke up, and even though it was the next day, I was like three hundred years in the past being taken care of by Clockwork, only it was back when he was still alive and human."

Danny paused mid-narrative to wonder at how un-humanlike Clockwork had always seemed. He had assumed that Clockwork was born in the Ghost Zone, but he shook it away and resumed speaking.

"Then Dan showed up again. I think he must have seen the staff Mallory built because it was the one he used as Clockwork. Either that, or he overshadowed someone who knew about it. Or Mallory and Clockwork both have this scar over their eye…which I guess makes sense since they're the same person…uh, anyway. My older self…Dan killed Mallory and said he would become a mindless, violent type of ghost. Then he used the medallion he gave me earlier to travel through time somewhere and left me behind to vanish. Except I didn't, and Mallory came back as Clockwork, but his memory seems to come and go about everything. Literally everything. He was talking to me about Jurassic Park, but couldn't remember what a movie was. And while we were taking a break just before I came here, he was talking about this girl Emily that he used to love, and a few minutes later didn't even know who she was. And then he remembered again and went on talking about her, but it's like he forgot he was a ghost and that we were in ancient Greece.

"Oh, sorry. Didn't mean to jump ahead there. So Clockwork was a ghost, only he wasn't violent like my…Dan said he would be. I told him everything that had happened, and even though he shouldn't have known, it was like he suddenly remembered. And he took us both through time chasing after Dan, and we wound up back in the dinosaur days, and then really far in the future, and that was creepy. They invented this device that extracted ectoplasm from ghosts…let's see; how did Takamine describe it? They mined it out of a person who was about to die and processed it into power and building materials, then built their city out of it. I saw it after it had been going on for five hundred years and…there was nothing left…"

He trailed off again and closed his eyes against the image of the ghost community's last suicide run. He had promised them that future would never occur.

"We didn't find Dan there, either. He left again before we could catch up, so Clockwork took us back to ancient Greece just before Dan arrived. Only Dan never showed, and Clockwork said something was wrong. He started to take me somewhere, but there are these guys that call themselves the Guardians of Space, and one of them kidnapped me and brought me here, and here I am."

Dead silence. The three friends stared at Danny for a moment more, then turned to each other to discuss his story. Danny sighed; even telling them that much had been a difficult feat. They were his parents, even if they really weren't. He glanced around, unwilling to face their uncertainty, and his eyes rested on the nearby pedestal and the orb that sat atop it.

They had entered the abandoned temple because it was probably safer than outside for purely physical reasons. Saurians (modern day dinosaurs, Danny thought,) were in ample abundance in the forests of the Amity region. Of less concern was the ghost that had been following them; they didn't think it would enter the "sacred grounds." Once inside, they made their way to the large central chamber. Dried blood and old scorch marks nearly obscured the floor's circular pattern. As with most of the temple, bones were scattered about.

"I don't know," Jack said loudly in some response. "A ghost that controls time is kind of…convenient, I guess."

"Agreed," Vlad said, nodding. "Phantom knows about me, and he's more than creative enough to concoct a scheme like this." He glared pointedly at Danny and switched into his ghost form.

Jack and Maddie rose along with him, weapons appearing their hands as if by magic. Danny felt his stomach clench in fear; he didn't want to fight them. As though she could read his mind, Maddie said, "Don't worry; we're not going to hurt you. Just lock you up, so you can't go running back to your master."

'It's the truth!" Danny protested. He backed away, but Jack was surprisingly quick to get behind him, and Vlad had simply vanished. He looked around frantically and switched to his own ghost form, ready to flee through the ceiling if at all possible.

Suddenly, Vlad cried out and reappeared in a heap on the ground, as though something had reached out and swatted him there. Maddie and Jack rushed protectively across to him, aiming in all directions lest they miss their attacker. "Who-" Maddie started to call, but she was interrupted by a booming, gravelly voice.

"Foolish human worms, disbelieving the evidence of your eyes!"

Danny whirled around just in time to see the orb, which he had thought was stone, begin to glow the deep purple of a black light and float into the air. Though still impressive, it wasn't quite as striking when Necrowind didn't project fear. He simply appeared curled around the chamber like the cat he was so fond of imitating. Even the humans were more cautious than scared of the great bone dragon.

"Who are you?" Jack yelled, shifting to stand heroically in front of his wife and best friend.

Necrowind clicked his teeth and shook his head. "It has been too long since I was sealed here, if mortals no longer fear my visage. I am the Wind of the Necropolis, but I will allow you to call me-"

"Necrowind," Danny growled. Perhaps in the future, the self-titled god would be one of the good guys, but Danny was fairly certain the version he stared at had not reached that point. "What do you want?"

Necrowind reared back and tilted his head in surprise. "That is a name I have not heard in ages," he muttered. "Yes, you must know that one. He called me 'Necrowind' as well. Listen well, mortals. When first you arrived, I thought that you had come seeking a boon of me. Now, that I have heard this tale, I feel confident enough in your motives to confess that I no longer have the power."

"You're the power source," Maddie whispered, staring down. She looked up again and called, "We didn't realize you would be a ghost."

"Ghost?" Necrowind exclaimed. "I am your god, worm; more so than the imposter called Phantom! Behold, for I am Thanatos, consumer of souls! I am Hades and Demeter, god of death and life!"

"Yeah, yeah," Danny broke in, affecting the same unconcerned attitude he used around his enemies. "Tremble and despair, right?"

For a moment, Necrowind couldn't seem to decide whether to be affronted or not. His neck weaved back and forth, snakelike, as he glowered at the little insect that dared challenge him. He snorted, a noise that might have a chuckle, rattled his wings, and settled back down. "Indeed," he replied calmly. "At one time, yes, you would have. Now…" He waved a claw listlessly.

The three friends exchanged glances. "The stories say Thanatos is Phantom's greatest foe," Maddie ventured.

Necrowind preened. "It flatters me."

"Will you help us defeat him?" she pressed.

"Do you not listen?" the dragon sighed. "I haven't the power, for he stole it from me in a rare moment of weakness. It is I who am forced to request your help."

Silence descended as everyone mused on his words, but Danny paid little attention, his mind awhirl as he tried to think of some way he could go back. He was under no illusions that the Guardian would come back for him, and without Clockwork…

But the medallion was pseudo-technological, wasn't it? Tucker had plugged his PDA into one. "Of course," he whispered, earning the undivided attention of everyone else. He looked at the three friends. "You got the technology, and you…" he turned to Necrowind, "I bet you've still got enough power to make it work."

"Make what work?" Jack asked.

At the same time, Vlad demanded, "What are you going on about?"

"You can send me back in time!" Danny exclaimed. "You have the technology; he can power the equipment. And I can go back in time and stop my evil older self before all this happens!"

Necrowind almost seemed to purr. "I did warn Fate that those pieces of power would be his downfall. If the mortals will accept succor from a fallen god, then I will permit the same."

"Permit, huh?" Maddie repeated, exchanging an amused glance with Jack. "But how do we know either of you are telling the truth?"

"You came here looking for his help," Danny pointed out. "Now, you're going to ask if he's serious?"

"Make no mistake, mortals," Necrowind added. "It is not you for whom I do this. Ensuring a brighter future is merely a side effect of my grand plan."

"_Your_ plan?" Danny grumbled.

Jack, Maddie, and Vlad huddled together long enough for Necrowind to begin muttering in impatient Greek. Finally, Jack announced, "Okay, we're in!"

Necrowind allowed his form to dissipate so the two humans could hook his core up to their machines. Vlad, in ghost form, stood guard protectively while they jabbered on in techno babble. It was a bit awkward since Danny held the medallion with the ribbon wrapped around his wrist. Suddenly not at all certain that it could really work, he shifted his weight. "Uh, wait. Do we even know where this is going to send me?"

"Nope," Maddie replied brightly.

Jack grinned and pushed a button. "Bonsai!"

He didn't expect everything to go white. Danny blinked the light dazzle out of his eyes and glanced around. Broken clocks and bits of debris laid scattered a perfectly normal, if old-fashioned, wooden floor. The door behind him swung idly in the breeze, squeaking plaintively. A quiet sobbing emanated from the back room of Mallory's home. Danny became human again and slid the medallion back over his neck before going to investigate.

The back wasn't in much better state than the front, but he had no eyes for the décor. He focused on the very much living human bent single-mindedly over a broken staff. "Clockwork?" Danny whispered.

"Mallory," the man replied absently, refusing to look up or even acknowledge the girl who kneeled at his feet, crying into her apron.

"He's been like this for hours," the girl, Emily, cried. "He won't even talk to me."

"What happened?" Danny asked.

Emily shook her head. "It was as though I was possessed by the thing. I believe I was, though Goody Winthrop says it was merely hysterics. It killed my father; I remember seeing him unconscious on the floor, and the next moment, I was standing in front there while two demons passed through the wall. I didn't see, but the women talk when they come in. They say the demons battled until they both vanished back to Hell." She glanced hopelessly at the back of Mallory's head.

Danny resisted the desire to shrug and ask what she expected him to do. He was no psychologist; that was his sister's job. The nuances of the human mind were even more inscrutable than girls.

But Clockwork wasn't human.

And Mallory was.

And they were both the same.

He felt responsible, but how could he have known? They always split ways when they landed in a new time. He never had the opportunity to notice Clockwork's state of mind.

Except in Greece, when Clockwork had talked at great length about the girl he left behind, and how he was sorry that he hadn't managed to be any help.

"Listen, Emily," Danny said suddenly. "This is going to sound really strange, but one of the demons you saw was actually Mallory's ghost. He came back to stop himself from being killed. For you, I think."

Emily gasped and raised a hand to cover her mouth. "No, that's not possible," she replied. "He…he didn't die!"

"But he was supposed to," Danny forced himself to say. "He did die there. You cried over him. I watched it happen."

Doubtless thinking that he was also an evil demon, Emily started backing toward the door. "No," she whispered, shaking her head in denial. "You're lying."

"Look at him!" Danny exclaimed. "He doesn't even know we're here."

She was on the verge of tears again, but she stopped to look. "He's dead inside," she said quietly, almost to herself. "Mallory? Come back to me."

Danny walked around in front of him to see that he wasn't even working. He just sat there, holding the staff bits together with his eyes closed. "Clockwork," he called quietly, hoping to get some response. The man twitched.

"That name…" Emily said tentatively.

"It was his name as a ghost," Danny replied. Addressing Mallory again, he asked, "Do you…know that?"

"I…" Mallory began. "…remember. It was my fault. Your older self. If not for me…"

Emily threw herself around his shoulders, and he made a feeble effort to pull away. Failing, he simply dropped the pieces of his staff on the table and looked up. "I helped you because I thought I was supposed to. But the more I helped, the worse things became. Preventing my own death seemed like the obvious solution but…"

"It made things worse," Danny finished. "But how do you remember that?"

"I'm Clockwork," he finally admitted with a faint smile. Giving Emily an apologetic glance, he added, "But I'd forgotten what a romantic fool I used to be. Will you wait for me behind the house, Danny?"

Danny nodded and walked around through the front. He thought Mallory intended to say good-bye and didn't really want to think what would happen after that. He felt guilty enough for ever disrupting the poor man's life, even if it was meant to be. It was stupid and unfair. Consequently, he was startled, but not very surprised when he nearly walked through Clockwork floating behind the back wall. What did surprise was how good of a mood Clockwork seemed to be in.

"Uh…everything's okay, then?" he asked hesitantly.

"Not yet," Clockwork replied. "I'm protecting these few moments from suffering the same fate as the rest of your timeline, but your older self is still a threat."

Danny glanced furtively at the wall, as though he could miraculously develop X-Ray vision and see through it. "What'll happen when we leave?"

"Why should anything happen?" Clockwork asked. He let Danny dance around the subject for a few moments before rescuing him. "Danny. I am the master of time. I don't need to commit suicide to be here right now."

"Oh." That made entirely too much sense. "Right." Then he was confused again. "No, wait a minute. Why did you have to die in the first place?"

"I didn't. The life or death of my living self matters very little."

"Okay," Danny said slowly.

Possibly to fend off further questioning, Clockwork held out his hand to display a Fenton Thermos. "I believe you need this. Shall we?"

After a moment to decide that it would probably just make his head hurt anyway, Danny smiled and took the Thermos. "Sure. Let's go."


	15. Chapter Fourteen

The Guardian of Space sighed, listened for a moment to the sounds of carnage, and fiddled with the button on his staff. Someone yelled; Zeus begged for mercy. There was a crash, and an errant energy blast whizzed by. The Guardian sighed again and stared around balefully. "It took you long enough. He's making more of a mess than I expected."

"Get the others and go back to your room, or-"

"Or what? You'll make veiled threats at us?" The Guardian snickered at Clockwork's unchanging expression, and turned to Danny. "We're very boring sometimes, aren't we?"

"Go!" Clockwork reiterated more forcefully. The Guardian shrugged and vanished through a portal very much like the one Clockwork used.

"Is he…really…?" Danny began.

Clockwork nodded wearily. "Sadly, yes. You should go while your older self is distracted. I need to deal with them again before they cause any more trouble."

Having the seen what sorts of trouble they could cause without traveling through time, Danny blanched, nodded agreement, and flew up to peer through the arch into Olympia. Expectedly, it was a mess. The white marble was scorched black. Statues of some overweight god of lightning lay in pieces on the floor. Ghosts in various states of pain and opacity lay moaning, or simply curled up in the fetal position. The few who hadn't dared to challenge Dan huddled near the door; they looked fearfully at Danny and fled past him. Dan himself sat astride Necrowind in the center of the courtyard, laughing maniacally down at the overweight lightning god.

"Now, who's next…" he called, trailing off as he noticed Danny standing amidst the mess. "I might have known," he said, almost pleasant. "You just don't know when to give up, do you?"

"Well, that's something we have in common," Danny replied.

Dan narrowed his eyes. "You're too late. This world is mine; there's no one left to stop me."

"Incorrect, little worm!" Necrowind roared. He gave a vigorous shake that sent Dan flying almost into Danny. Later, Danny would berate himself for not thinking to use the Fenton Thermos at that moment, but much like his older self, he was too startled. He had fully expected to have to fight them both. "Long have I sought a champion to destroy my rivals. I will now consume you who are left and take my rightful place as King of the Gods."

"I'll deal with you later," Dan informed his younger self. He turned to Necrowind. "No one betrays me!"

"It seeks to intimidate," Necrowind laughed. "Very well, little worm. Come into my jaws." He lunged forward, mouth wide.

Danny ducked out of the way and retaliated with an ectoplasmic energy blast, then stared in a kind of horrified fascination as his older self did likewise. He seemed stronger, as though he had absorbed energy from the ghosts he had defeated. He easily knocked Necrowind away and darted beneath the snapping teeth to reach the dragon's core. Necrowind rose on his hind legs and crashed down, but Dan went intangible and rolled out of the way, aiming energy blasts for gaps between ribs.

Suddenly, Danny remembered that he was holding a Fenton Thermos and mentally kicked himself. He wasn't there to be a spectator. Looking around, he noticed that most of the ghosts had escaped, and the few who hadn't were well out of the way. It was safe enough, he decided. And if not, hopefully he wouldn't cause any lasting damage. He took a breath and gave a wordless scream, activating his power-draining Ghostly Wail.

Both combatants cried out at the noise, but Dan remained steadfastly standing. "Not…again…" he grunted.

Necrowind's howl of rage turned suddenly to a shriek of pain as the obsidian glass that comprised his core cracked. Danny broke off the attack and activated the thermos over both of them, but Dan, grinning evilly, reached through ribs gone intangible and barely visible to snag the core and lunge out of the way. The movement broke Necrowind's concentration, and he faded away completely. Not paying the slightest bit of attention to the bone dragon, Danny aimed and fired again.

For a moment, he thought he had won. Dan made no move to get out of the way. Then he heard the sound of shattering glass, and a scream that put the Ghostly Wail to shame echoed over the heavens. He dropped the thermos and clapped his hands over his ears, but it didn't do much to cut out the noise. It didn't last long, but it left him momentarily deafened. When he managed to pull his hands away and look up, he gasped.

Dan stood as though as nothing had happened, his eyes a brilliant shade of yellow, and an aura of green haze around him. "You see?" he laughed. "No one can stop me. Not Clockwork, not the 'god of death', and not you."

Danny, backing away, attempted to look defiant and probably failed. "I thought you just wanted to secure your future," he mentioned, attempting to buy time.

"And I have," Dan replied with a vicious sneer. "I exist outside of time; killing you will mean nothing to me, now."

The ghosts of ancient gods returned or rose up, seemingly given a new vitality by the green haze that curled about the floor. Their faces were expressionless; their eyes glowed red. Danny felt it himself, a strange urge to do whatever the Master wanted…

He shook himself relatively free of the spell, enough to stop walking forward and even take a few steps back. Fortunately, Dan didn't seem to have mastered Necrowind's aura of fear, yet; Danny was rationally scared instead of cripplingly terrified. So Dan was a big monster, now; he'd dealt with those before.

Danny snatched up the Fenton Thermos as the first few ghosts hurtled towards him, caught them inside it with no effort. Dan said something gloating, but a pair of nymphs (he realized what they were later, when he remembered they were naked) caught Danny by the arms. He went intangible; oddly, they didn't seem prepared for that, and joined the others inside the thermos just in time for Danny to be hit by a bolt of lightning. Nothing worse than he suffered having Kat for a friend, then Zeus was down as well.

Different faces, maybe, but it was still a rehash of every mass battle Danny had ever been in. Easier, in fact, because despite Dan's control, the Olympians still couldn't work together as a proper team.

Easier, that is, until he met Ares.

"Fright Knight?" he muttered as the great warrior swooped to the ground atop his mighty steed.

"Fright Knight!" Dan shouted. The rest of his words were garbled gibberish that Danny could only assume was Greek. Fright Knight nodded gravely, responded in kind, then leveled his sword at Danny's chest and said something he could only assume was a threat. Or maybe a promise.

"I have no idea what you just said," the ghost boy cheekily informed him. "But I'm guessing you weren't asking me out for a pizza." Then the world was a confused jumbled as he rolled away from a vicious slash and shot high into the sky.

Dan was gone. Again. That couldn't mean anything good.

* * *

Power. That was the secret; he was sure of it. And with the Heart of Thanatos sitting alongside the Time Medallion in his chest, he had access to a nearly limitless source. All around him, the world was a shifting, shimmering haze of bright green. The color of his eyes… 

No, the color of his younger self's eyes. Dan shook the odd moment of reminiscence away and looked around. He was surrounded by the energy of life, and the Heart enabled him to convert into a usable power. He could steal it from the living and reanimate the dead. He could control ghosts with little more than a thought. He was all powerful.

And he still couldn't figure out how to work that blasted Time Medallion.

"Now, where am I?" he grumbled peevishly. Worse, he didn't even remember activating the medallion. He had passingly considered jumping a few minutes ahead, long enough for Fright Knight to have dealt with his younger self. Having proper minions was an interesting new experience. If his memories as Vlad were any indication, one needed to keep an eye on them at all times, but he knew from experience that Fright Knight was pretty trustworthy. So, the impatient little thought had flitted through his mind, and before he could even react, the medallion had whisked him away to who knew when or where.

He was right about one thing, at least: power made the using the medallion infinitely easier. He would have to take greater care not to accidentally activate it in the future-

And with that, the scenery changed again. The earth was a blackened wasteland, devoid of even the sickly green mist that represented ghosts. Even the atmosphere was gone, destroyed by abuse, or perhaps simply age. The sun was a bloody shade of red that visibly pulsed above him, larger than he had ever seen it. He stared in open-mouthed awe as it contracted one last time, then exploded.

After several moments, his somewhat numbed mind came conscious long enough to wonder if he could survive a super nova, and he threw himself back into the past, where he collapsed to his knees in exhaustion. He didn't make it very far; the planet was still a blackened wasteland, but the sun wasn't obviously pulsating anymore.

"What happened?" he wondered aloud. Though he wouldn't have admitted it, the silence was beginning to get kind of creepy. He stared down at his hands. It was several seconds before he realized that the weak energy surrounding them was what was left of his own power after the jump.

"There's no life here," he realized, looking around. "So I can't use the Heart." He dropped his head into his hands and sighed. "This is going to take forever."

Irrationally, someone chuckled nearby, and Dan sighed for a completely different reason. "You again…"

"One of me," the Guardian agreed good-naturedly. "Not as easy as it looks, is it? All that power? There's a reason we ancient ghosts are specialists."

Unwilling to remain on the ground while the Guardian floated so superiorly above him, Dan pulled himself to his feet and clenched his fists. "Are you the same one as earlier?"

The Guardian shrugged, gave that infuriatingly smug little smile. "Yes," he replied. "And no. There's a reason we usually refer to ourselves in the plural."

Silence. Dan bit back a growl, but it crept into his voice anyway. "And that is…?"

At first, the Guardian ignored him in favor of fiddling with that button.

"Why do you do that?" Dan demanded, his annoyance quickly rising into outright anger. "Clockwork doesn't fidget like that, so why do you? Knock it off!"

The Guardian leveled him with an amused glance and finally deigned to respond. "See, that's your first mistake. You compare us to Clockwork. He doesn't 'fidget' because he's _infinitely patient_." He sneered the words and ended with a disgruntled expression. "We are Clockwork, but we're not. We're as different as you are from Danny Fenton and Vlad Masters. Certainly, there's echoes of the same personalities, but what kind of idiot would mistake you for either of them? We are echoes of Clockwork, and he is an echo, as well, of us and an us we've never even met. We are all the same and as infinitely different as the worlds that birthed us."

He paused in his fervent lecture to resume grinning smugly. "But I wouldn't expect you to understand."

Dan started to reply, then decided he'd rather not give the Guardian the benefit and said, "Take me back."

"Oh, I can't do that," the Guardian said, feigning sympathy. "Why, that would be meddling. I'm so terribly sorry." Laughing, he vanished to avoid an energy blast and reappeared a few feet to the left. "But look on the bright side: A few more jumps like that, and you should be back to a place with some greenery left around. You might make it in a few months if you hurry. When you get there, do try not to throw yourself back to beginning of all time, won't you?"

Dan gave an enraged shout, but the Guardian had already vanished.

* * *

Danny flew headfirst into a marble column, too addled from the blow to go intangible. Fright Knight said something, and for one terrifying moment, he thought he had some kind of severe brain damage. Then he remembered that Fright Knight was speaking Greek and caught up the Fenton Thermos from where it had landed next to him.

Aim…fire…but Fright Knight skillfully dodged the beam and slashed at the column above Danny's head. He remembered to go intangible this time and jumped up through it.

Was it his imagination, or had Fright Knight seemed a little uncertain for a moment?

Danny used his body splitting technique to avoid a jab; as usual, it felt really weird, and he quickly pulled himself back together before trying the thermos again. He caught the horse, but Fright Knight himself managed to jump free…

And stood, looking around in confusion. He shook his head as though to clear it and held out his hand. Energy gathered around his gauntleted fingertips; Danny threw up a shield against the attack only to watch as it dissipated harmlessly. It was his turn to stare as Fright Knight slowly shook his head, holding his hand against it. He looked around in blatant bewilderment and muttered something Danny suspected was a question.

Dan's control had worn off. That was the only explanation he could think of for the sudden end. He shook his and shrugged as Fright Knight quizzically addressed him. "Sorry, I don't know Greek," he explained.

Fright Knight tilted his head to one side, then narrowed his eyes and made a very poor neighing sound as he listlessly flapped his arms.

"Oh! Um…" Danny stared down at the Fenton Thermos, wondering if it would be a good idea to open it.

"You might as well," said a voice. There was a rattle of armor as Fright Knight jumped to attention, but Danny just stared suspiciously.

"Which one are you?"

The Guardian fidgeted with his staff, staring off into empty space. "One of the ones you don't want to see. Just open it. He'll fight you for it anyway, once he figures out his horse is in there."

Danny continued to stare, just shy of being hostile.

"Oh, for pity's sake," the Guardian muttered. "No, I can't read your mind. You're just that predictable. And yes, Dan's control will have worn off on all of them, and they're far too lazy to care about fighting you without it."

Danny hesitated for a moment longer, until it looked like the Guardian was going to grumble at him again, before he pulled the cap off and hit the reverse. He expected them hang around and try to get answers, but they barely registered their freedom before they were off again. Even Fright Knight didn't stay any longer than it took to reach his horse and mount again.

"Now, what are you doing here?" Danny demanded. "And where's Clockwork? I thought he was rounding all of you up."

The Guardian continued to quietly fidget and refuse to meet Danny's gaze, but he maintained a smile that made the boy's skin crawl. "Clockwork? Oh, I'm here. And I'm a few miles to our left several decades in the future. And the other side of the world, quietly enjoying my freedom. And-"

"That's not what I meant, and you know it," Danny interrupted.

"But who did you mean, I wonder? The one of us who brought you here? Or the one of us who still answers to the name Mallory?" He chuckled at Danny's confused spluttering. "Humans…so easily confused. I love it. Listen very carefully, boy. The one of us who brought you here was one of us; a Guardian of Space. The one you left was…still not the one you're asking for. Mallory is your Clockwork born human on a whim. He used to be one of us, too. But that human thing he is now? Is a mockery of what he used to be, and a mockery of what he will be, for whom we also have no respect. He uses what power he has left as a human to hold that one moment away from everything else. So, boy, you have a choice."

Mouth dry and breath shallow, Danny waited. And waited. He clenched his teeth. Then, finally, "What?"

The Guardian arched an eyebrow and turned to look him in the eyes for the first time. "I can send you after your older self, but you'll have to find your own way home. He's thrown himself so far into the future, even the ghosts have died out, and I'll leave you there. Or I can send you after Mallory, but he's made himself forget again. You'll have to kill him yourself if you want to continue your mission, because I won't be back for you there, either. Or I can send you there to scrape out some kind of normal life, stuck in the time loop he's created. You'll be aware of it, of course; at least, at first. You've been out here with us for too long. I suppose it will wear off eventually."

The choice seemed perfectly obvious to Danny.


	16. Chapter Fifteen

As Mallory stared down at the black-haired boy, he couldn't shake the feeling that it had all happened before. As if from some kind of dream, he could almost hear an echo of what Danny was going to say just before he said it. There were a few deviations, but the similarity was eerie enough to scare him.

"Ah, fever dreams," he laughed, despite the stabbing uncertainty that ate away at his insides. "I experienced those once. I had myself convinced-"

"Duck swimming in a desert?" Danny interrupted wearily. "We go through this every day. Will you just listen for once?"

For just a moment, the stabbing became a twisting inside him, and he knew something of his fear must have shown on his face. For a single moment that seemed to stretch into infinity, he felt like there was something inside him trying to desperately to get out. It begged for him to just listen, just this once, and then it would all be okay. It would all be okay if he would just listen, just for a second.

Then the image of Emily swinging his own staff at his face flashed across his vision again. "I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about," he choked out.

"Just listen!" Danny burst out, lunging forward to grab his arm and he started to stand. "Just for a second! He's got her. Every day, he gets her, and he uses her to come after you. And he kills you, and then it starts all over again! You have got to stop!"

_He's right, you know. You're going mad over this. Every day it gets a little harder to remember, and the harder it is to remember, the harder it is to forget._

"There's nothing to remember," Mallory whispered to the voice in his head. He saw Danny's eyes narrow ever so slightly, a speculative little squint. Then he was running and couldn't remember when he'd started.

_You didn't know the second time around. The third time, you just lied. You're not human. You were never meant to be. What were you thinking? Letting them talk you into that stupid dare! One of their little experiments gone horribly wrong._

The very worst part about the voice in his head was that it his own. It came from somewhere deep in his mind, just above the part where humans dream. The fourth or fifth time around, he had spoken to Pastor Harrington, who said it was a demon possession. But it wasn't.

Mallory promptly forgot he'd even thought about that loop, but the part of him that knew what was going on refused to be silent. It wanted its freedom, his freedom. He wanted his freedom.

Forget.

Why was he outside again?

A couple of giggling girls wandered by, Emily just a step behind them. For a moment, he was very happy to see her. Then a weight dropped into his stomach.

"Looking for someone, clock maker?" one of the girls laughed.

Mallory laughed, as well, to cover his cringe at the title. "I don't remember," he admitted. He almost meant it, too, except for that nagging voice in the back of his head. "I should…go back…" he stammered, backing away. The two girls thought it was endearing, but Emily, his beloved Emily, just gave him a look of cold calculation. She smiled, but it was too measured, too sly. A moment later, Mallory was eye to eye with Danny again, with no memory of even opening the door of his building.

Danny's expression was sympathetic, but he quickly looked away. "She's out there," he guessed. Or maybe it wasn't a guess. Maybe they'd done this before, too.

Forget.

But only a little bit.

"Have we done this before, too?" he asked, somehow managing a snide tone that surprised him. Danny didn't seem surprised.

"Yesterday," he said calmly. "And the day before that. That's when you started running out there."

"And…how many times now?"

"The whole loop?" At Mallory's hesitant nod, he said, "About a week, I think? Maybe a little less. That was new, though."

"I know…" he whispered. Then clenched his eyes shut and forgot.

_You can't keep doing this._

"Are you hungry?" Mallory asked with a brightness that he hadn't felt ten seconds before. Danny groaned and slapped a hand over his face. "Are you all right? Not ill, I hope?"

"I'm fine…" Danny sighed. "We already had breakfast. Twice today."

Mallory gave him a look that was pure concern. "Have we? My memory often fails me, but I'm sure I would remember that."

"The universe is doomed," Danny grumbled, wandering into the back room. He didn't bother to open the door. A moment later, Mallory forgot even that.

* * *

"Come on!" Danny exclaimed. "We've gone over this a dozen times now! Your name is Clockwork, and you're a time controlling ghost! Every day, we go through this. And every day, my older self shows up to kill you. Honestly! You have complete control of this stupid loop; couldn't you at least kick him out of it?"

Mallory blinked.

_But you don't, do you? Have control, that is. It's absolutely imperative that you not remember he's here, because you might try to save yourself, and that would ruin everything. Wouldn't it?_

Forget.

* * *

"What's the point?" the black-haired boy sighed. "I'm only going to be here for a few hours, and then you'll get killed and-"

Forget.

* * *

"It's Danny." Confusingly, his tone was one of weary resignation. "My name is Danny. Why won't you just remember?"

"I apologize," Mallory said, tilting his head slightly. Ever fiber of his being screamed for him to leave the room because the boy was a danger, the most dangerous thing he'd ever encountered. And he didn't know why. "I wasn't aware we'd met before."

"We haven't," he said shortly. "We've never met. This is the first time you've ever laid eyes on me."

There was a very long, very surprised silence. "Then…" Mallory began tentatively, sure that he didn't want to hear the answer. "How can I be expected to remember your name?"

"Who cares? You never want to hear it anyway."

_That's true. You hate him for being here. He wasn't here the first time. Do you remember what changed? Because I don't anymore. It's time. This is your fault. You did this to him. The least you can do is listen._

Mallory wasn't sure what he could have done, but he knew the voice was right. Whatever had happened to Danny was his fault. Fear ate away at him, but his conscience was worse. He sat down, right there on the floor next to the feather and hay-filled mattress. A spark of something flickered through Danny's eyes, surprise and, strangely, a touch of hope. He stared into those eyes for a long time, long enough for the spark to die again and his conscience to stab him in the gut.

"Tell me," he whispered, at last. "I think I'm ready, now."

Danny gave him a look; it reminded him of a puppy who'd been beaten one too many times but still hoped that the cruel child would be nice, just this once. And he started to speak.

_You already know how it goes; he's told you dozens of times already._

He listened anyway.

"And he told me the only way to stop it was to kill you," Danny finished dully. "But I can't."

Forget…

_No! This has to stop, now!_

Oh, but he wanted to. Forgetting it all made it so easy to deal with.

"I just wish I knew why you lied to me," Danny added after several seconds.

"It was a bet," Mallory heard himself say. Or was it the voice in his head taking over at last? "We wanted to know what would happen. An infant, before it acquires its own consciousness, possessed by a ghost. And not just any ghost: we drew lots….straws…and I won. Or lost. I'd rigged the game, you see."

He looked away from Danny's horrified expression. "Yes, terrible, I know. We were terrible. We thought we were gods. And we were the worst because we were Fate. We controlled mankind's very destiny. Anyone could kill a human, but only we could keep him from even being born. It was Zeus' idea, but we chose the child and the time. And for almost a year, everything was fine and boring. Then my host was born, and everything changed. I was human, completely imprisoned in living flesh."

"And…your host?" Danny asked quietly. He was scared to hear the answer.

"This body is as much of a mindless shell as yours would be if you left it. What consciousness it did acquire was caught up in mine. It changed me. I had to forget; it was the only way I could cope." He let out a quiet, bitter laugh. "Mallory, she named me. Ill-fated. It was like she knew.

"Please understand. I'm not who used to be. That's why all of this. I just can't make myself let go. Even if it means dying every afternoon, I can't let her go. Now, I'm sorry, but I'm going to forget again. You should do the same."

"No!" Danny exclaimed. "You can't even see her here, so what's the point? It's just my evil older self controlling her, and…and…you're making her kill you." He sounded like someone who was grasping at straws, but for just a moment, Mallory thought he was going to change his mind.

He blinked. "I'm sorry, have we met?" he asked.

* * *

_We're going to be doing this for the rest of eternity, aren't we?_

Even the voice sounded hopeless. It was the same day. Mallory was staring at Emily's victorious expression.

_Danny was right. It's not her, and it's never going to be. You want things to be okay? Let. Go._

The moment was completely frozen in time, and had been for several nonexistent units of measurement that would normally be referred to as minutes. Danny was somewhere else in the town, acting like nothing was wrong. He'd been doing that for days, ever since he gave up trying to explain. He had tried saving Emily a few times, but his part in the loop always started too late.

Nothing could be different. That was the problem.

_Like he said: you're forcing her to kill you. You're supposed to love her, and this is how you show it? Ridiculous._

_Am I really this callous?_

_Of course. I have to be._

Clockwork nodded. Time resumed.

* * *

Danny heard the shouting and tried to tune it out. They were dragging Mallory out of the building; he could tell by the sound. Then the dull thudding of fists against flesh, a crack…he clenched his eyes closed and waited. The moment between Mallory dying and Danny waking up in that room again seemed to stretch on longer than usual. Then he heard crying and realized that it hadn't reset yet.

A scream. A wail of pure grief.

He opened his eyes.

Men charged past, doubtless fleeing from Dan. Danny turned around.

Emily was there, kneeling over Mallory. Dan was already gone. Someone came out to pull her back inside; she barely resisted. Danny crept forward. It was like déjà vu all over again. Even the noisy ghost raven was there, sitting on a roof and waiting for something. Danny kneeled next to the body.

"Don't bother," said a tired voice.

"Which one are you?" Danny asked without even bothering to turn.

"Yours."

Danny froze, then slowly turned to meet the ghost's eyes.


	17. Chapter Sixteen

A/N: It's about time I finished this, don't you think?

* * *

The ground was a charred wasteland, but it wasn't the fields of magma it would become. The sun was still red, but a less angry shade. Dan sat on a rock with his head in his hands, too exhausted to express his rage, or even properly feel it. He was not, however, too exhausted to hear the sudden whine of a Fenton Thermos and throw himself skyward just in time to avoid getting sucked in. Shoving his fatigue aside for the moment, he twisted around to sneer, "What, no advance warning?"

"Aw, come on!" Danny protested, rolling his eyes. "I'm tired. You're tired. Couldn't we do this without the fight for once?"

An ectoplasmically charged hand rose, aimed for the boy's head. "Sure. Hold still."

Danny's quick dodge turned into a faceplant against the hard ground when the attack hit him in the leg. He recovered and spun about, then the medallion hanging against his chest started to burn and the world tilted crazily for a moment. Dan had jumped backwards in time, not realizing that Clockwork had given his younger self the means to follow.

There were tufts of dried grass here, not that the boy had much chance to sightsee. He had forgotten that Dan had the Heart of Thanatos until the older ghost sucked all the life from their immediate vicinity and hurled it at him. Danny dove underground and came back up right beneath Dan, but Dan caught his outstretched fist and tossed him aside.

"You see?" he laughed. "Even while I'm weakened, you're no match for me."

"I've beaten you before," Danny reminded him. Then time jumped again, and his optimism died. There was life there; no animals, but the grass was almost a proper meadow. He could see the plants around them wither and turn black as Dan absorbed their life and braced himself for an attack.

"Let's see you follow this…"

Danny's sight went dark and his ears started to ring. Even when he could see again, it was dizzy and disorienting. Something hit him in the chest, and he flew backward for what seemed like hours before he hit the ground again, bouncing along it until his head smashed into a wall. When he finally opened his bleary eyes, there was a strange, green mist dusting the ground. Dan hovered a few yards away, his eyes closed, soaking it all up.

He needed to get the Heart away from his older self. He knew that with as much certainty as his own name. Danny shifted; his body was on fire, and his head seemed about to explode, but he pushed himself to his feet and then, wobbling, into the air. He took a steadying breath, braced his feet against the rock he had smashed into, and pushed himself forward. His intent was to go straight through his older self and snag the Heart of Thanatos on the way, but Dan noticed at the last second. He snagged a mostly intangible leg and pulled the boy back through his own chest.

"You didn't really think that would work, did you?" he growled. He reached out to rip the Heart from Danny's grasp.

Injured and desperate, Danny didn't even bother to return banter. He clung to the Heart with the both hands and used his feet to push against Dan. He knew as soon as Dan caught him that his last ditch effort was a failure, and very probably would have died a minute later had the Heart, already cracked from a Ghostly Wail, not taken that moment to shatter completely. The explosion knocked both ghosts backwards, cringing against the light and sound. Danny could feel the glass shards pierce his body, and then the explosion died away, and he felt something else entirely.

The world was ablaze with green fire, _and he could feel it_. Every ant; every blade of grass. Every worm in the dirt, and every insect in the air. All of it, even the dead, sang into his head and buzzed along his nerves. He felt birds singing in a forest too far away to see. He felt the bones of a rabbit, eaten by a fox years before. He felt people, miles away, busy in their cities. Suddenly, Dan's distraction made sense; Danny wanted nothing more than to stand there and soak it all in. He was a god, he realized; a god of life and death.

Or half of one, at least.

All of this went by in a second. He would have liked more of a chance to just perceive it all, but Dan (what was that pinprick of white light in his chest?) appeared in front of him, too late to dodge, and tackled him to the ground. "I will not go back!" he snarled. He pulled back an ectoplasmically charged fist and brought it down on Danny's face…

And Danny caught it…

They shared an identical expression of shock. Danny was the first to recover, using his energy blast to throw his older self halfway across the field. Dan actually stumbled back to his feet. The boy stared down at his hands in amazement; if his energy blasts were that powerful now, what would his Ghostly Wail do? Best not to find out until he had no other choice.

Across the field, Dan realized that brute force was not going to cut it anymore. He had let his rage overwhelm him and completely missed the boy's green aura and glowing yellow eyes. That was a mistake he would not repeat. He narrowed his eyes speculatively. "It's nice, isn't it?" he called out. "All that power."

Danny dropped into a battle posture, but Dan could feel the uncertainty radiating off him and wondered if the boy was more scared Dan or of himself. "Better watch out," he continued, smug. "Don't want to send yourself to the end of time or anything."

The white aura of Clockwork's medallion got a little brighter as Danny's subconscious tried to make the suggestion a reality, but before Dan could permit himself a victorious smirk, the boy ripped it off his neck and tossed it away. "Not falling for that," he replied, equally as smug. He launched himself forward, throwing energy bolts that Dan easily dodged and returned. For hours, it seemed, Danny threw himself into the fight with reckless abandon, reveling in his infinite tirelessness. It didn't even matter that he couldn't get the upper hand, because Dan couldn't touch him. They might have gone for hours more if he hadn't happened to look down.

There was a price for the power he wielded; around them was an ever-widening circle of dead grass. And not just the grass, he realized a moment later. Everything in that circle was dead. Dan used his distraction to slam him into the ground, but even that couldn't quite shake off his growing horror.

"You can't win," the older ghost said, his voice reasonable and matter of fact. "Of course, neither can I, I notice." Danny stayed where he was, trying to close off his senses from the indescribable feeling of _wrong!_ that surrounded him. He was barely aware his older self was even talking until he drifted closer and held out one hand. "Come on," Dan all but purred. "Let's stop fighting, like you said. We could be gods. Heh, we _are_ gods. Let's remake this world into something better."

Danny was far too disgusted with what the Heart had done to him to ever agree, but something inside wanted it desperately. The Heart sensed its other half and screamed to be made whole again. In a burst of insight, he nodded and reached out to take his older self's hand.

It seemed they both had the same idea, after all. He felt like he was being ripped in half as Dan tried to pull the shards of the Heart out of him; by the expression on Dan's face, he felt the same way. The shrieking of a thing in agony drove out all thought. There was only need: the need to posses, the need to be one. The need, in Danny's mind, at least, to put everything right again. Perhaps that was the turning point.

Dan screamed and fell to the ground, defeated. Danny thought he screamed, too, as the countless shards embedded themselves in his body. He stood and stumbled a few steps back, fumbling for the Fenton Thermos. Someone pushed it into his hands, and he captured Dan without really thinking about it. He couldn't think because if he did, the force inside him might take it as permission to act.

"Danny?" someone whispered.

"I can't," he replied, shuddering at the sound of his own voice. "I can't get it out. I don't know how."

A child ghost put his hands on Danny's shoulders and looked into his eyes. "Yes, you do," Clockwork said quietly. "Thanatos wants his freedom. You just have to let go."

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a pair of yellow eyes rose up, eager. Danny let go.


	18. Epilogue

"So…everything's normal again?" Danny asked hesitantly.

Everything seemed normal. The thermos was back on its pedestal behind them. The Heart of Thanatos was in one piece and busily fooling a scruffy beggar into becoming Pariah Dark. Somewhere, a coelurosaur escaped an early demise and fulfilled its destiny of becoming someone else's dinner. All of Dan's meddling seemed to have been erased, according to what Clockwork showed him in the viewing screen. Even the Master of Time seemed to be back to his old self.

Clockwork nodded, staring critically into the screen for anything he might have missed. Or perhaps he simply couldn't meet Danny's eyes. "A few alternate realities are created," he replied. "A few new versions of me to keep out of this universe." Danny felt like he should he apologize, so he did; Clockwork merely shook his head. "It happens more than you think, for considerably less glamorous reasons. I should be apologizing to you."

"You expected that." Somehow, Danny didn't feel as betrayed by that as he would have a few days earlier.

"I wish I could have warned you," the ghost said quietly, almost shamefully. For just a moment, Danny could see the human Clockwork had once been, and then the moment was gone. "You should leave now."

Danny started to comply, then turned back. "What about the future?" he demanded with an expression that brooked no argument. "They were in real trouble. Are they going to be okay?"

"I can't tell you that, Danny." He held up a hand to forestall the boy's argument. "Even I don't know what will happen that far ahead. You humans are far too unpredictable."

"There must something I can do now…"

"There's plenty you can do. I could even tell you. But anything you do now could be undone later." He pointed to the screen, where a woman was receiving the Nobel Prize for inventing the Brendinian Process. "The world will end when it ends. All you can really do is wait."

Danny looked like he might press the issue further, then turned and flew away. He would wait, he realized. He had to wait. He had to know, and if it did happen…

He already knew what to do, didn't he? Takamine was wrong; his extended life hadn't been a punishment. It had been that distant future Danny's only choice.

So wrapped up his thoughts was he that Danny didn't even notice the stillness until crossed the Ghost Portal and landed in the kitchen to see his mother frozen in the act of joining her husband at the front door. He landed and became human, and then time resumed.

* * *

Emily stood before a new grave. The stone wasn't placed yet; the mason had broken his arm escaping from the demons. No one had been at his funeral, really, except her and the pastor. Harrington had rushed through the service, but Emily couldn't tell if he felt put out at having to perform it or if he was just terrified that the demons would come back. She knew they never would, though she couldn't have said how she knew.

Somewhere behind her, a raven laughed raucously. She rubbed her arms against a sudden chill, but her mind was too numb. She wondered if she was a terrible person for missing Mallory more than her father.

_Was it worth it?_ the wind seemed to ask.

Emily gasped suddenly as a chill ran down her cheek, as though an invisible finger of ice had brushed her there. And the wind whispered, _Yes…_

* * *

A/N: I apologize so hard for making you all wait. You know, it's been almost four years since my first fic? Somewhere along the way, I forgot to add my timestamp on the ends. I think this one needs it. Thanks for reading, all.

Elegy 05-28-2009


End file.
